I am returning to Flecker for just one day with this descriptive poem of a 'small untidy village' in the French Alps.
RIOUPEROUX
High and solemn mountains guard Riouperoux,
Small untidy village where the river drives a mill:
Frail as wood anemones, white and frail were you,
And drooping a little, like the slender daffodil.
Oh I will go to France again, and tramp the valley through,
And I will change these gentle clothes for clog and corduroy,
And work with the mill-hands of black Riouperoux,
And walk with you, and talk with you, like any other boy.
James Elroy Flecker
P.S. Tomorrow: Alfred Edgar Coppard with a tale of 'The Unfortunate Miller'.
To Fehmida,in Norway.
One thing their website doesn't say--
If you're twenty-six miles west of Rodez,
And you come to the outskirts
Of Villefranche de Rourque,
When you're on your way
To black Riouperoux
To "tramp the valley through"--
Rieupeyroux is not Riouperoux!
There's a difference between the two.
The Avreyon is not the Isere.
Riouperoux is so very far!
To walk with you and talk with you
At Rieupeyroux?
This I know now I cannot do.
Riouperoux's not here at all--
No river mill, no mountain wall.
No breathless words, no solemn view.
Riouperoux's the other way,
Off towards the Alps and Chambery.
Oh too many worlds, too many days.
What can one do, at Rieupeyroux?