ELEGY OF THE DUKE OF MARMALADE

O my fine, my honeycoloured Duke of Marmalade!
Where are your alligators in the far-off camp on the Pongo,
And the round blue shadow of your African baobabs,
And your fifteen wives smelling of the forest and the mud?

No longer will you eat the succulent roast child,
Nor will the tame monkey at siesta time kill your lice,
Nor your gentle eye follow the tracks of the effeminate giraffe.
Across the fiat hot silence of the plain.

Gone are your nights with their flowing bonfire hair
And their somnolent everlasting dripping of drums,
Into whose depths you would sink slowly as into warm mud
Till you reached the ultimate shores of your great greatgrandfather.

Now, in the showy frame of your French dress-coat,
You pass sugared with greetings like any courtier,
In spite of your feet, which from their ducal boots
Cry out to you: Babilongo, climb up by the palace cornices.

How elegantly goes my Duke with Madame Coffeewith,
All velvety and dainty in the violins' blue wave,
Restraining the hands that from their patrician gloves
Cry out to him: Babilongo, knock her down on that rose sofa!

From the ultimate shores of your great greatgrandfather,
Across the flat hot silence of the plain,
Why do your crocodiles weep in the far-off camp on the Pongo,
O my fine, my honeycoloured Duke of Marmalade?