The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems

Shelley / Baudelaire / Joyce): The RadioChanges Poet Channels

101 JACk foleY Valentine’s Day Cento (Chaucer / Milton / Pope / Byron / Shelley / Baudelaire / Joyce): The Radio Changes Poet Channels endeth thanne love in wo? Ye, or men lieth! Virtuous and vicious every man must be A forster was he, soothly, as I gesse When she hath lost it in hir wantownesse she gives in large recruits of needful pride I was to do my part from Heav’n assigned Ask of the learned the way? The learned are blind “I se,” quod she, “the myghty god of Love” When she hath lost it in hir wantownesse What dire offence from amorous causes springs? satan from Hell scap’t through the darksome Gulf Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing Full swetely herde he confessioun And plesaunt was his absolucioun Her blood was not all spanish, by the by And the fair shape waned in the coming light! Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished— When she hath lost it in hir wantownesse O blake nyght, as folk in bokes rede, That shapen art by God this world to hide 102 Tisn’t only tonight you’re anachronistic! Grandfarthring nap and Messamisery and the knave of all knaves and the joker. Heehaw! she was just a young thin pale soft shy slim slip of a thing then, sauntering— La Maladie et la Mort font des cendres de tout le feu— say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me? Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk ! ...