EIFFEL TOWER
By:
September 16, 2024
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
To Robert Delaunay
Eiffel Tower
Guitar of the sky
Your wireless telegraphy
Attracts words
As a rosebush the bees
During the night
The Seine no longer flows
Telescope or bugle
EIFFEL TOWER
And it’s a hive of words
Or an inkwell of honey
At the bottom of dawn
A spider with barbed-wire legs
Was making its web of clouds
My little boy
To climb the Eiffel Tower
You climb on a song
Do
re
mi
fa
sol
la
ti
do
We are up on top
A bird sings
in the telegraph
antennae
It’s the wind
Of Europe
The electric wind
Over there
The hats fly away
They have wings but they don’t sing
Jacqueline
Daughter of France
What do you see up there
The Seine is asleep
Under the shadow of its bridges
I see the Earth turning
And I blow my bugle
Toward all the seas
On the path
Of your perfume
All the bees and the words go their way
On the four horizons
Who has not heard this song
I AM THE QUEEN OF THE DAWN OF THE
POLES
I AM THE COMPASS THE ROSE OF THE
WINDS THAT FADES EVERY FALL
AND ALL FULL OF SNOW
I DIE FROM THE DEATH OF THAT ROSE
IN MY HEAD A BIRD SINGS ALL YEAR LONG
That’s the way the Tower spoke to me one
day
Eiffel Tower
Aviary of the world
Sing
Sing
Chimes of Paris
The giant hanging in the midst of the void
Is the poster of France
The day of Victory
You will tell it to the stars
— From Poesía prosa
From the 1995 anthology The Cubist Poets in Paris (ed. and trans. LeRoy C. Breunig). Below: Vicente Huidobro and Robert Delaunay’s Tour Eiffel. Poem by Huidobro, paintings by Delaunay (Madrid: privately printed, 1918).
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.