Dorothea Tanning

Rain of Blood, Aix-en-Provence

Toward noon, July 1608.
No light, or hardly. Hebetude lay
like a membrane on cobbles
and casseroles, on bread dough
                                                  like sin itself
in half-hearted concupiscence
with saturated time, conjuring
the stroke of noon, gleeful enemy
of toil, before the coup de rouge,
                                                  A drop fell.

              But...so deeply red,
              some wounded petal from
              a window ledge?

              Came a second one,
              stigmata on a fustian sleeve,
              crimson rain, yes, blood,

God’s tears, His oceanic repugnance.
So their curate spoke, watching
his abject flock implore heaven’s mercy
                                                  on their souls.

Then one man, Pierese by name,
a fantasist, unpopular,
a flea under the soutane:
“Your miracle is butterfly merde.”

Flammarion tells it straight:

              A swarm of butterflies,
              leaving tree and field
              rose in clouds; their red
              droppings spread panic
              on the town of Aix

O storm of powdered silk
too high to see, you swarmed
halfway round the world
                                                  from where—to where?

Nabokov’s beloved nymphalid,
lepidoptera, hairy worm,
              true to your discipline
              as if obeying
              an ordained
              choreography of
              sublimity in transit.

Citizens of Aix! look no further.
Your souls evanesce above you, scarlet
                                   tears of miraculous shit,

              prodigy enough
              for Monsieur Pierese
              (who, by the way,
              beat everyone at chess).

DOROTHEA TANNING is an artist and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous reviews and in the 2000 edition of The Best American Poetry. Her memoir, Between Lives, was recently published by W. W. Norton. Her art is in the collections of the major museums of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Paris, and London, among others. She has lived and worked in Chicago, Arizona, New York, and, for twenty-eight years, Paris. She has lived in New York since returning to the U.S. in 1979.

“Rain of Blood, Aix-en-Provence” appears in our Autumn 2002 issue.

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