​In Paris

​
A rectangle of light spills in the high window
over the porcelain tub in our small hôtel,
and a blackbird, a merle, is singing his strange chanson,
r’s swallowed in the back of his throat, those palate-
ringing u’s:  dur, truffes, du fluide, tu penses.
At the rue de Varenne, Rodin’s Thinker is still stuck
in the rose garden, his bronze thoughts lost
in translation.  Across the lawn, in a smaller version,
he broods above les Portes d’Enfer:
Abandon hope, all ye who enter.
Underneath, eternity’s lovers twine
about each other, the embrace of the damned,
yearn and long but never touch, all that unattainable
flesh.  The twisting lovers try to hold on even
as they are torn away or melt backwards
into the liquid bronze night, condemned to writhe
in tortured high relief.  But we are here, in our
middle-aged imperfect bodies, walking hand in hand
under an allée of plane trees in the dazzled light,
and my desire for you, even after all these years,
is a marc, an eau-de-vie, hot and heady
in the blood.  High above us, chimney swifts,
les martinets, take up their nightly chorus, shrieking
as they swoop and dive for insects in the long dusk.
Praise the small cage of the elevator
that carries us to our chambre.  Praise my four-
chambered heart, still beating; praise your gall
bladder, unremoved.  O Paris, city of café noir
and vin rouge, where even the subway signs
are works of art, city of rapturous light,
ghosts of Hemingway and Stein at the Closerie,
Simone and Jean-Paul at the Café de Flor,
you and I, our little story nearly over,
singing loudly as we can, in our tone deaf voices,
against the coming rain and the following dark.
   
-from Radiance (Word Press, 2005)