IMPROVISATION #51
RENE CREVEL'S TIME
(1900-1935)

A turn of the century clocks
in the flux of sidereal time
of the spark
upon the vernal equinox
signs into a surreal return,
return, return
and in an annual spring out
from a miracle birthmark
over a thousand dark crimes
against the personal chain
of the unorthodox novelist
Rene Crevel
his twisted memory
whose love  for knowledge
will remain,
on our necklace and wrist
as time regains in Proust,
we have all cut loose
over a short life
of the courageous Jean Helion
covering all painters
and elevated and celebrated
poets whom the fascists
cannot capture
for we resist
in the spirit for art's sake
which may be fashionable,
but once it captures you
fascism cannot break us
into an idolatry without hope
from Prussia to Russia
Europe and the Americas'
you too are honorably graced
forever enraptured
covering a world of rebellion
as in the 1968 resistance
a live and die- hard chance
of a quick toast to Lamartine
we are bards with red wine
a day away
from the Paris crowds
with Rimbaud in the Commune
along highways burning
with fires of dissolution
in the shroud of a rainbow
always leaving early
at the miracle of revolution
of its poet's avant- guard
Rene Crevel also owes
his convolution
and sure conviction
for all time
cleverly learning well
in a prediction
to survive with power
from his narrative
to keep us alive
yearning with predictions
of a vanguard desire
to be sharing your fiction
and soon icon bashing
in a mature sunshine
at an activist hour
by a rock garden
of the Tuileries
to deflower laughter
in the afternoon
and pardon with mine
under the half moon.