Leaving Paris
By Don George
You are going to America
to a land you called home.
You are leaving Paris behind
— the old streets you wandered
as the sun washed the oranges and peaches
and the onions, and the lettuce spilled over the street
where the villagers bellied and prattled and squalled;
the cheap café on Rue de Rivoli
the rich always passed by,
and where you knew a cold beer
and jambon pays salved the worst days;
the foolish weekends on the Normandy beach
where you almost came to believe
your own lies when they lodged deep
in blue eyes and brown skin and blonde hair;
the wise nights when you were alone
and paced the Île Saint-Louis and the Marais
waiting for the glare and hurry of day
to become the cool and lucid green of the platanes.
–
Then there was an older, wiser girl
who you didn’t have to be in love with to enjoy,
and good, passioned politics and arts
whenever you wanted on Rue Montmorency,
and warm, full wine and frites in the Quartier Latin
with all the wild eyes and hands and reeling vows
and the fire-eater cornered by,
but you could get away whenever you wanted
to the Seine and meet new lovers there
— yours and others — and because you were simple
you laughed at good and bad
and even when you were alone
and your footsteps echoed through the streets
everything was all right;
because you were young
and just discovering the world
so even when there was nothing
to be in love with
you loved silence and solitude;
because that was life as it will never be again:
when place and rue whispered only to you
and the dusk-soft lamps took your hand,
when a midnight croissant and beurre in a candled café,
the perfume of dark hair after Musset,
promised a dream without end
— like the first love you lose
forever;
because that was your Paris
and now you are leaving it
like the gray bookstalls on the quai
that holiday no one came:
a beautiful book, your book,
closed
without you.