IMPROVISATION # 206
JEAN HELION'S HOUR
(1904-1987)

A hero is a hard word
    to share
   yet it is to the bard
  and poet  Baudelaire
who directed your trek
   to be a figurative artist
  when your life was spared
in that Stettin an der Oder prison
 camp   (now in Poland)
 by the Nazi guards
  that you,
     Jean ,daringly escaped
in the bleak dawn
  that allowed you to live
     and share
from the abstraction
 you stamp in your lyricism
     without any pardon
 pride or mannerism
  as merely a creative passion
 you possess
  under  clouds of fascism
fortunate by doing
  what was right
leaving America
  in the darkest  Occupation days
indifferent to any  fashion
when the lights go out
in your country landscapes
of  park trees
 in the Luxembourg gardens
  of  our  unique still life's
that offers liberation.