Provençal—My heart remembers it
Come to me once more
in that soft cotton dress
of moonlight falling
from your shoulders
like laughter between us
impetuous and barefoot
Provençal—I see your beauty before me upon all the roads
After days of rain,
nineteen shades of green
I’ve never seen before.
One for each spring.
I still listen for
my name in everything that’s not
your voice.
*Provençals: Both of these Provençal poems take their titles from lines by the Troubadour poet Peire Vidal (c. 1175–1205), translated by Paul Blackburn in his anthology Proensa.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 1.
Jonathan Blunk’s authorized biography, James Wright: A Life in Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), earned praise from The New York Times Book Review, where it was an Editors’ Choice. He has published essays and reviews in The Georgia Review, and his poems have appeared in FIELD and other journals, including new poems in The Ekphrastic Review and Nixes Mate Review.
See all items about Jonathan Blunk
