Le Contrarienne (English) Poem by Nathan Coppedge

In media she took the space
With handbags,
And the darkened room
Where no photographer enjoins
With sacred books
Hapt with the chop strokes of
Some ‘young muse’
A trepidy she enlivens
To some garden sanctuary
Holding politics or breakfast
And the news-

Surely she, by holding
That space within the eye
Took up the darkened glass
Of a reticule,
Or murmured in my hearing
The mouth of basil herbs

Whether I or she knew
The phantasms of the books
Or a threaded serpent stairway
Following out of mazy sanctuaries
I was spry
To hold the pen within my hand-
As though she were
Some apt pupil,
And I still held
A mesmered spectacle
Withholding everything
In my poison