My daughter, Saffron, gave me a genetics kit for my birthday this year, and I know it’s a bit cheesy but in the tradition of middle aged dads everywhere, I’ve been working up the old family tree.
I’m pleased to have found a great many writers and poets in my bloodline!
The First LeBon
The first LeBon arrived in London in the big Huguenot emigration of the 1590’s, and published the Elizabethan period poem below:
Thou has se’en me– stood’st at the corner of thy street
And O! A fire makes for flashes on thy stone sill
To be solitary pleases you not
So thou wouldst seek out pleasure
And sooth- thou would knows’t wherefore and whyfore
Nay, pray not for me today
Prithee, pray for me on the morrow– Francois LeBon
American LeBon
Next, I found an American whose family settled in Louisiana. We have a great-great grandfather in common. He loved the SF beat poetry scene so much he moved out there in 1953.
Antoine LeBon wrote the following, published in a zine called Street Poems in 1957:
I finally bugged out yesterday
Couldn’t peep my hillside pad
Maybe I’ll head there in a year
Maybe I won’t
I can feel you diggin’ on me, cat, day and night
I’m hep to it, the art and incantations
I dig it, it’s a gas
There’s a dream, a fantasy maybe
Stringing down this road we call our home
There’s shards of glass everywhere
It cuts me, cuts me deep, and finally I say
Hey man, hip me to it
What do I gotta know?
Japanese LeBon
Perhaps strangest of all is a British girl whose family moved to Japan in the 30’s, and who wrote pretty little haiku like this one, this is Belleanne LeBon from her school poetry journal:
Cherry blossom lips
Smear in a line as she falls
Into blue water
Amazing stuff. I showed it to Yasmin and said, look, babe, we’ve always been poets and she said, love, you’re not a poet, you’re just a clotheshorse who got lucky.
Well, I’ll add more if I find more!
‘Til then- Simon
Follow Me!
