Francois Couperin at the Court of Louis XIV

I

Simple at the clavecin, he sits,
Fingers touching love itself…
What precise melancholy
Proceeds from monstrous life!

Young Apollo excels at the masked ball
And the billiard table,
Serene master of the world.
His daydream is the people’s missal.

Letters from Bach used as lids
For jam-pots; sly under his perruque,
The courtier smiles ironically,
Turning a waspish bon mot.


II

And the gallantry of His Majesty,
And the coquetry and deportment of the ladies,
And the frivolities of the fête champêtre,
And the streets’ commotion,
And the soldiers parading,
And the antics of saltimbanques and players,
And the geometric strolls in summer gardens
And the carrolling of hydraulic organs in grottoes…
The spiders of civilization
Toil their webs with finesse,
Fabricating stellar dentelle
For minds to caress.
Now sensibility
Reaches true acuity,
Pressed by self-control.
What desperate sympathies inform the hour,
The hour of man’s undoing?
“Remain gay and lively,”
Said Bussy-Rabutin to Mme de Sévigné,
Both old and counting their ailments,
“Take nothing too seriously
And then you will live another thirty years, at least!
And I will wait for you in Paradise.”


III

After victory, defeat;
After glory, corruption;
The elegant and magnificent
Fall to tenderness at last.
And the wistful hours compose their melodies.
What remains is an atmosphere,
Appeals of a ghost in an empty corridor.
Love, simple love, keep me in your good graces,
Point me the way by moonlight through the woods.

IV

Merry company,
This man you cannot do without:
Black-robed in the corner,
Mouth turned down,
A thousand choice sorrows in his eyes.

V

May we now both please and purify the soul:
Ferocious puissance polishes its claw
In rondeau, chaconne and sarabande.
This age of wonted deaths
Will be rejuvenescence.
We have no climate but the airs and movements of time.
Let sound befriend the lonely
And save of them what it can.
Deny no grace or cadence
To carry you home.
This life, so glad and grave,
Is all devotion.
Restless music fights to a final hush.
God, truth, man:
It is all in the fingering of a phrase.
These falls and rises educate us in poise.
To the noble, the slightest token is illumination.
To be civilized, that is our malady and pride.
Who knows what keeps the funambulist in the air?
Study the sinuosity of the cat,
And render your life as supple.

VI

The suspension of a semiquaver,
The measure of an interval:
From such choices
Is a world composed.

Dumbly he ponders
In a blue room,
Less the Sun King
Than the Man in the Moon.