Muse by Estill Pollock

Memories like gun dogs trotting
back through briars—yet, others remote
as weather in a far country

In those days in Paris
you could reach me on Balzac 51-04
through the old Exchange—I still recall the sound
of the telephone, the bell’s cranky burr
ragged as Tibetan prayer flags

It was the time I was writing
my novel, the first one
no one wanted, and I sank the last
of my money in a private edition
from a printer with no English

When he set the type, if
in doubt, French phrasing trumped
shortcomings to my style, chapters 
now a running order
the Dadaists thought daring, disregarding
fame’s fragile light and shade

Journalists telephoned, a curiosity
about choices between nuance and La Grand Parade

Then, later, rumours of the printer’s daughter
ghosting proofs, her patient
Iterations, love’s slang tamped wily
by the inking racks