Thursday evening could have gone better, I guess

  He put the coffee

  In the cup

  He put the milk

  In the cup of coffee

  He put the sugar

  In the café au lait

  With the coffee spoon

  He stirred

  He drank the café au lait

  And he set down the cup

  Without a word to me

  He lit

  A cigarette

  He made smoke-rings

  With the smoke

  He put the ashes

  In the ash-tray

  Without a word to me

  He got up

  He put

  His hat upon his head

  He put his raincoat on

  Because it was raining

  And he left

  In the rain

  Without a word

  Without a look at me

  And I  I took

  My head in my hand

  And I cried.

                                                   

Sometimes the balloon does not go up, sometimes it goes where one least expects - except that misdirection is to be expected. One can take the elaboratest precautions to defy the fact, without changing it: one is not the balloon. I deny that the play is ill judged, and I know better than to deny tears. One can manipulate ballast, jettison things, adjust the inflation; one can exercise a good deal of control, or less, which is only harder; but when the mooring is lifted, publication is a balloon. I like it when the balloon goes up, and when it does not, there can be suffering, but no regret. I am a balloonist.

That figure who enjoyed my coffee, smoked in my house, got up and left? I figure, he knew that, and already knew or quickly discovered, ballooning is not for him. Here's a publication which will gain, on any given occasion, the most intense referral, igniting a spontaneous blaze for a single insertion, which originally may simply smoulder in a corner somewhere, for weeks. Comparatively few people habituate this publication, but I do know something about them all. They are balloonists, too. I have one in particular in mind, who can help to illuminate this lark, and who happens to inspire its argument.

Beyond any doubt, he is a cultivated master of his craft, but his passion is to suspend all of that in the pursuit (I beg you to believe) of surfable waves, a species of ballooning known for saltier countenances than our aerialism allows. He writes to me, that the season at his favourite marine haunt is somewhat tepid this year, that they have had years of finer waves - vintages, can you stand it, pretty much exactly as Virgil said; but the company has been marvelous. This is our tendency. If you will the risk, to be tumbled or stolen aloft, you will the company; and sometimes, you must be. 

This morning, then, dispatching the spent coffee and airing out the place from that nervous cigarette, already there are readers who have scattered, and frankly the vestigial company is marvelous. Here, text is not a verb, and only a piece of the noun, which is context; and that is where the balloon, the surfboard is drawn. It's Friday, but the game is still ballooning. We gauge the wave. We pick our breeze; and both are always volatile. The thing is, to let go the line. Faites vos jeux.

The balloon may go up.

Jacques Prévert
Paroles
  Breakfast
1947
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, translation
1949
City Lights Books, 1958©