CLEMENT MAROT
Of the
Abbe
and His Varlet
The abbe and his man are of one kind-
One pod, two peas-each in his wine immersed:
One big, one little, but both much inclined
To madcap revels in the name of thirst;
One drinks the best, the other spurns the worst.
But come the evening they will disagree:
Monsieur
l'abbi
cannot, the night long, be
Without the succor of his alcohol;
And monsieur varlet cannot sleep if he
Has not drunk down the flagon, dregs and all.
R. T. SMITH
Bantry Boat
Epigrammes,
I, LXVI
Translated from the French
by
Norman Shapiro
Turf craft,
they call it, a slab pressed flat
and stamped by Wild Goose Studio in Cork
with the Bantry Boat, St. Brendan and four
monks afloat on a sea of crosses, their currach
a new moon, a rib, a ripe slice of melon.
I hiked someone's pasture in a sun shower
to view the gray pillar my guide book touted
as the legendary Kilnaurane stone .
