ROLAND BARTHES AT 100
Birthday Nov. 12

Now no words
for a Beat, no limits
from your ideas or career
only an empty voice and tomb
looms ahead
as a immaculate id, ego,
and portrait of the nearly great
Roland Barthes is hid away
who loved to write of defects
and effects on other personas
like on the novel genius
of marvelous Marcel Proust
but Barthes did not have poof
why once forbidden one liners
live on and into grief
remaining on remainder
shelves so many years
in unbelief until I picked up
his "Mythologies" in Paris
on an unfortunate library date
Nov. the twelfth of your birth
nearby the Seine bench
back to critical Sorbonne
a bit embarrassed in a disclaimer
to read you in French
but you did not want to be read
only to be an idol and icon
chanted by your academic friends
in the seedy Autumn dawn
on a lonely muted rain
realizing in the final exam
when you never recanted
as an innovator and surprised me
by the self hatred of the past
you were no more farsighted
that the swan before me
by the grassy mirrors into
a red leafless riverbed.