Ode to Villon
With many thanks to George Faludy whose translation of Francois Villon (1431-1463) into Hungarian made him famous and an underground copy of his book jolted my adolescent life!
Hormones raging in my 12 year old veins
I lie in bed on a Sunday morning
thinking of the janitor's daughter
in the apartment building across the street
and make room for her even though
she doesn't even know my name.
My mind is filled with the desire to hug her
but, instead, I hear my sister's giggles,
a two-year-old child playing with her toys.
Our parents are gone for the day
and I am to act the role of the brother
that I asked them for so long to become,
now fulfilled as they left her in my care.
I peck my imaginary friend on the cheek
and excuse myself from the warm embrace
of the soft duvet to search for something to do.
A library of pocket books fills every
bookshelf,
over five hundred of them, each one read
then displayed on a shelf as a trophy.
My sister plays contentedly in a corner
of the living room by the balcony,
toys and good strewn in the warm
spring sunshine that streams
down the from the wide eastern sky.
King sized, my parents' bed sits
folded into a comfortable couch.
A table at one end holds creams and tissues,
makeup and mascara in the drawer,
and below, a pair of my mother's shoes.
I know their content because
I go through them weekly.
The table at the other end of the couch
is more like a small bookcase
with a drawer and a flat top.
It is usually locked.
Once I found it open and took out
the thickest book, "A History of the
Huns"
and voraciously read every page
until I heard my parents' key
unlock the front door.
I remember only one scene,
the wedding of Atilla, the Hun,
scourge of the Roman Legions
enjoying his nuptial and dieing of a nosebleed
for which his young bride was hacked to death.
After all the grief and confusion,
Atilla was interred in a triple coffin:
one of marble, one silver, one of gold.
Legend has it that an entire river was
redirected.
He was buried deep under the riverbed
and no one has ever found his tomb.
This particular Sunday I found
the small bookcase open again;
I reached in and pulled out the thinnest book.
It was poetry.
With cold logic and unbridled lust
I deduced that the sole reason
for this book to be under lock and key
was graphic sexual imagery.
I was not disappointed.
Page after page the adventures
of a country rogue unfolded
in the fields of Provence
and the bedrooms of Paris.
I finished the book before breakfast
and only remembered one verse:
the hero lifting the skirt of his new lover
as they hid under a bush
on a verdant hillside, likening
the pink flesh between her legs
to a ripe cherry and admiring
the thick line of black hairs
that ran from those edible lips
all the way up to her navel.
I could not chase that imagery
out of my mind for years!
What did that rogue find so irresistible
about a stretch of thick, black hair
that made him lick it wet and smooth
from one end to another,
feasting on the bare flesh
both below and above it.
It was the greatest mystery
for my 12-year-old mind
and I carried that mystery with me
into my late teens trying to solve it
between the legs of bare bellied girls.
Their cherry petaled charms
satisfied my basic curiosity
but their mound of Venus
stopped where it should
and did not solve the mystery.
I continued to search for the girl
of French poetry, the girl of my fantasy.
I was twenty-two, having drinks
in a private beach club in Tangier,
guest of the English writer, Alec Waugh,
listening as he explained how he wrote
an entire erotic novel
without using a single foul word.
We had just warmed up to our subject
when an Italian family joined us
causing Alec, ever the gentleman,
to shift topic on account of their
nineteen-year-old daughter.
Her parents quickly assured us
that her ears were mature for such talk.
As all conversations tend to do
this stream shifted on its own
and soon the girl and I found
ourselves bored with adult talk.
We excused ourselves
and went swimming in the blue
Mediterranean waters of Tangier Bay.
We warmed up to each other
in the cold water, and found
common ground in each other's lips,
nipples, and each other's genitals.
We swam away from our club,
came ashore and walked hand-in-hand
toward the distant sand dunes.
We spoke little, which stands to reason
since lust is mostly a non-verbal exchange.
Another reason, besides the immediacy
of youthful, yearning flesh was
that she spoke mainly Italian,
I, mostly English and our exchanges
had to be translated into broken French.
Once our bathing suits came off
we no longer spoke.
We took our appetizers
from each other's tongues and lips,
I helped myself to antipasto
fondling and suckling her ample breasts,
and then the entrée - it was divine!
Then I descended for desert and discovered
to my amazement and delight
a thick patch of hair running
from her Mound of Venus to her navel.
Suddenly ten years of waiting
for a mystery was over.
Fantasy became reality!
I moaned and groaned
and my licking tongue would not let go
as I brushed those hairs from left to right,
then from right to left,
moistened with our intermingled juices
even after she had calmed down.
She became curious and asked,
"Qu'est-ce que tu veux?"
But how could I answer?
How could I tell her that,
what was for me a fantasy
of a lifetime, had just come true?
Daniel Kolos
Priceville
September 20, 2002
Copyright 2002
by Daniel M. Kolos
reproduction,
reading or
publication in any medium
requires the author's permission
Link to another
Villon page where Arpad Barna translates Villon into English:
members.aol.com/drarpad/VILLON1.pdf
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