A BALLADE OF VILLON, HIS CAT
(“C'est à mau rat mau chat.”)
I am that cat, nine lives agone,
Who brushed about your shoon, Villon,
And round Montfaucon spat and preyed
While kindred rogues on gibbets swayed
Who erst had drunk and diced, God wot,
In midnight bordels, piping hot,
With itching fingers, prone to grow
Too nigh the breasts of Grosse Margot.
I watched your antics, beryl-eyed,
Then mewed and miawled in amorous pride,
With Gallic Thomases, for miles
Athwart the steep-pitched Paris tiles.
Now all that merry crew, Pardie,
Are clean forgot, save you and me,
And Grosse Margot, this many a day,
Is dust and lime in Paris clay.
But you, François, arch rogue and poet,
And I, your cat—may all men know it—
Let not the Centuries trample down
The memory of our just renown.
Above the world we loom and brood
In splendid, astral solitude,
Intoning our antiphonies
As when we sat on Margot's knees.
L'ENVOI
Throned Imp of Song, in the land of the dead
Do you dream of the laurels that crown your head,
Or ever a tear or thought bestow
On old Greymalkin—or Grosse Margot?
