"It Will Come in My Left Lung," by Pierre Peuchmaurd
(translated by E. C. Belli)
from Gulf Coast Winter/Spring 2012
One day I am going to die, and when I do it will be with all the poetic drama and cliche that I can muster. My body, my general circumstance will suffer with an exquisite romance. In fact, after reading Peuchmaurd's poem, I have started a modest list of poetic tropes I insist on experiencing as I am dying. (1) It will definitely snow, probably one of those light snows in January. (2) There will be blood. It will be crimson. (3) I will compare that blood to a rose, whose brief bloom made it "barely a rose." (4) I will rely on some appropriately lyrical set of objects to count so I can keep track of the seconds or minutes I have left in this world. Maybe it will be birds. Maybe forevers.
Granted, I cribbed this list from Peuchmaurd's poem. Because I want to die like that guy. What man wouldn't? "The women, / since you are about to die, / the women open their dresses." They leave you their address as they go. Which is pretty awesome. Oh, hey, pardon the blood that is "rising like a tide onto the lips," I am ready, my lady. Ready to go steady.
Which is, of course, ridiculous. But, then, the ridiculous appears to be Peuchmaurd's trump. Well, actually, lacing an otherwise beautiful poem depicting a presumably young man's death with farcical commentary is Peuchmard's trump. And it's this humorous stab at sentimentality (both cliched and beautifully wrought sentimentality) that lends the poem its poetic muscle. It is like if Banksy got ahold of "Dulce et Decorum Est" while it was being read for the thousandth time to an undergraduate poetry classroom. And Banksy would make the speaker fall in love with the dying soldier. Perhaps the speaker would wipe the frothy blood to kiss the soldier on the lips. Because, Banksy would imply, the poem makes death a dark romance even while it is protesting against the soldier's death. Why not show both at one time?
Is the Wilfred Owen poem so sacrosanct that you could never pull this move off? Probably, yes. And appropriately for this poem, Peuchmaurd doesn't go that far. But this "beautiful death" trope, the romance of the young man accomplishing some novena of vitality while he dies deserves to be prodded. Peuchmaurd doesn't puncture the myth. He pokes at it. He keeps it intact so the farce and the cliche can be enjoyed as one big sentimental bonanza.
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