'Untitled'

Feel like I haven't read anything in full for ages so this isn't a book post. I was rifling through some papers the other day and found a poem I'd written a few months ago which on re-reading, didn't make me cringe and scrunch up into a tiny ball (me, not the poem. I tend not to throw away, however awful), mainly because it memorialises a time for me that deserves to be remembered. I re-jigged it a bit and, in the spirit of elephant-brainedness copied it below. It's a sentimental mind-splat without a lot of craft so don't take it too seriously.


"It's hard to blaze a trail when it's so
damned cold" she said

"It's amazing what they'll wear to keep warm"

A drawl met with scowls and typing
And a chocolat chaud from
the 40 cent machine

Hardly the dream of the bourgeoisie:

Enough for bread and cheese and
not much else
(the waiter in the Flore disdained us, quel surprise)

Wine experts decreed 1.80 a bottle was all we'd need --
and that it was,
nauseated from the Gare de L'Est
to Montparnasse
then home to bed as the rest
went out again.

A day of fur and pearls and
playing dress-up to troop into
the cold for a bar we never found
(we out-performed the boulevard, that day).

Paris with tea-drinkers:
Yellow tags and chips on the Ile:
The accent tripping further away,
our 'pardonnez' lost in the Englishness of our apologies.

*

One day the hawkers took no notice
as we reached the foot of the Tour
so we'd arrived, with no glance to the sky
To see it ironed into triangles of cloud.

And still we rode the 4 north and south
between the same old haunts.

'Til at last,

one day in May,
and the sun on our bellies on the Promenade des Anglais,
we thawed
and slept
and dreamed of where we'd been,
where we'd forever be.