IMPROVISATION# 45
PHILLIPE SOUPALT'S ERA
(1897-1990)

When we heard the words
in William Blake's "Songs
of Innocence and Experience"
you translated into the French
Phillip Soupalt,
dated for the next year
authored a monograph of text
we read at the Paris library
from the vault and bench
of this English genius for us
a pioneer for our surrealism
and when I your hundred verse
as you fled
the Vichy collaborators
to Algiers and imprisoned
by the fascism of the Nazis
for your patriotism
in your occupied country
our surface of memory
will not be buried by default
for an hour's service
among the sky birds
along the Seine
not for one era
fought in the underground
but rising into a morphing
into new glad day word
from poetry's quatrain to keep
and to sound again
by your supplanted flowers
as others may sleep.