A note on Valery Larbaud by Bill Zavatsky:
The Mask
I always write with a mask upon my face,
Yes, a mask in the old Venetian style,
Long, with a low forehead,
Like a big muzzle of white satin.
Seated at my desk and raising my head
I look at myself in the mirror opposite
Me and three-quarters turned, I see me there,
That childish bestial profile that I love.
Oh, that some reader, my brother, to whom I speak
Through this pale and shining mask,
Might come and place a slow and heavy kiss
On this low forehead and cheek so pale,
All the more to press upon my face
That other face, hollow and perfumed.
-- Valery Larbaud
Translated from the French by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky
from The Poems of A. O. Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud
(Boston: Black Widow Press, 2008
Line 9: some reader, my brother: This phrasing recalls Charles
Baudelaire’s poem “Au lecteur” (“To the Reader”), which addresses a “hypocrite
lecteur,—mon semblable, mon frere ("hypocritical reader -- my double -- my brother"). -- BZ










