Four Hundred & Twenty
Some Odd Days
When genius lived in London, English brains
Were unaware. When genius loved among
Them, drinking gin is what they did. The chains
He broke in poetry and sex with tongue
And knife and fists, the bindings he destroyed,
Samson-like, in loving and in hate as
He liberated in his bed and toyed
With Paul’s precious composition, made jazz
Go coursing through his gut, all these the lad
Accomplished in the fourteen months he stayed
In London, months which were a launching pad
For wild modernity that Rimbaud made.
A little known, but large, grand fact is . . . he
….Spent more time there than in gay Paris.
Final line lacks a beat:
“Spent more time there than in gay Paris.”
Could just add a syllable to the beginning: “Thus spent . . .” or “Had spent” ?
or . . . “than in gayest Paris”?? nah.
Go with “Had spent,” yes? As the most natural solution??