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Farewell, Paris
Every farewell is a form of dying.
In Paris Simone and Jean Pierre
at the bus terminal, Place Stalingrad.
an apartment in the fifteenth
with a window on the Gare de l'Est
where young Frenchmen embarked
for the trenches in the Great War.
The Japanese simplicity, the books
on Aikado and Roland Barthes
meditating on chopsticks.
I wake before sunrise and open
the long living room window
sit legs folded hoping
for the warm light to caress
my body as the sun begins to rise.
Yearning for something to happen,
someone to appear.
I wait in vain, there is no sun.
Perhaps I am not facing east,
too many clouds.
Slowly, gradually,
blue-grey tones in the sky,
the sky, the roofs,
the tightly packed facades,
come up like images
on photographic paper.
The air grows chill.
That night Jean Pierre confides
"I really don't care about the destruction
of these buildings. I enjoy them
while they're here. When they're gone,
I'll move on, and keep moving,
up to the mountains when I have to;
they won't be coming there,
anyway not in my lifetime."
We wander through
the African quarter,
four abreast in midstreet, eat
couscous on paper covered tables
with workers from the Mahgreb,
follow the canals, find the Hotel du Nord,
Arlette: atmosphere, atmosphere.
Paris is dying, old buildings battered down.
Sex by minitel murmers Jean Pierre
shaking his waist-length hair.
Paris, our Paris, is dead.
Perhaps the Pyrenees; in fact, Japan:
au revoir, au revoir, l'autocar.
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