Young Cassie and Ronsard's “Ode à Cassandre” on the Underground

“Let’s go, my dear, and see if the rose….”

The morning train is crowded,

and in the poem on display

a young Cassandre is being urged
to go with Pierre de Ronsard in the evening
to see if a purple rose has lost the petals
which were, ah, so fresh like her this morning.

And it has! Alas,
being as ephemeral as a young girl’s beauty,
and the scheming Pierre knows it has,
even before they reach it.

Cassandre Salviati, aged thirteen,
and married off the following year,
did she ever give twenty-year old

Pierre de Ronsard a second thought,

ever read this ode dedicated to her,
in the first edition of his Amours
emblazoned with her engraving
and nippled cones for breasts?

And today’s young Cassie, office-bound,
all boots and thighs up to her extensions,

does even she look up from her 'phone,

even give this poem a second thought?

I suspect she'd not stand for any

urging from some guy called Pierre

to go with him into some random

garden to look for a load of petals,

because what began at a royal ball in 1545
in the Château de Blois as a frisson
in a young poet’s mind - to reverberate

for centuries with Renaissance joie-de-vivre -

she'd think he's just some effin’ French git

ramblin’ on about a bleedin’ rose.

(Pierre de Ronsard  1524 - 1585  "Les Amours de Cassandre" published 1552)

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Reviews

[Eilis]

Does she care? Depends on the girl, I suppose. What does she want to see: does she want to feel like the flower or be the toughness of the thorn. I like the thought behind this. The idea of context being so important, but we aren’t always prone to thinking about things in that light nowadays.

It takes practice. Much like understanding the aim or purpose of poetry. Many things can seem superfluous in the right light.

I’m not sure if I’m reading this exactly as you meant it, but I do love the intelligence of it. The questions it makes me pose in my mind. Like the questioning of where one act ends and another begins.

The connections you make in your poems are always thought-provoking. Excellent poetry, Gerald.

[Gerald Parker]

Thank you for commenting on this, Eilis. I was being a bit of an intellectual snob writing this poem, probably the most ambitious one I've attempted. Firstly I've criticised Ronsard for knowing in advance that the petals have fallen off the rose, even though he says to the girl in his attempt to seduce her, let's go and see if the petals have fallen. The most difficult part to get right is the fourth stanza. I've got to get Cassie to see the poem in between all the arms of the standing passengers, holding onto the rails. I'm trying to make her small-minded and totally uninterested in the French poem. Why should she bother to read it, especially given the pro-Brexit attitude of some of us towards fellow Europeans? She probably hated learning French at school. I'm not sure if this part works.

[Eilis]

I can see what you mean about that part. Maybe saying it straight without the simile in the fourth line in that stanza would make your intended portrait of her clearer. I’m not sure.

I thought the last two lines conveyed her skepticism well, though.

[Gerald Parker]

Yes, that's a good idea, thanks. Those two lines are very awkward.