Marcel Proust: Chopin

/ Issue 14.1 /

Chopin, ocean of sobs and tears, of sighs
Above whose waves of sadness play a swarm
Of never-resting, dancing butterflies!
Dream, love, suffer, cry out, cradle, charm,
Always between attacks of pain you pour
An oblivion as dizzying and sweet
As the butterflies’ caprice from flower to flower;
And so you find your grief and joy complicit:
the whirlwind thirsts for tears, and more, and more.
Soulmate of pale moon and sea, the prince
Of despair or noble lord betrayed, and all
The handsomer for your pallor, still you thrill
To the flood of sun into your sickroom, since
It weeps in smiling and in seeing suffers…
Smile of regret along with hopeful tears!

Mary Jo Salter

Mary Jo Salter

Mary Jo Salter is the author of nine books of poems published by Knopf, including Zoom Rooms (2022), The Surveyors (2017), and A Phone Call to the Future: Selected Poems (2008).Her book Nothing by Design was recipient of the 2015 Poets' Prize. She is a co-editor of three editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry and is editor of the Selected Poems of Amy Clampitt. Salter is Professor Emerita in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Mary Jo Salter

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Author: Mary Jo Salter

Mary Jo Salter is the author of nine books of poems published by Knopf, including Zoom Rooms (2022), The Surveyors (2017), and A Phone Call to the Future: Selected Poems (2008).Her book Nothing by Design was recipient of the 2015 Poets' Prize. She is a co-editor of three editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry and is editor of the Selected Poems of Amy Clampitt. Salter is Professor Emerita in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.