Establishing Shot


While the credits roll in Les Quatre Cents Coups,
we see the Eiffel Tower, no matter where we look,
as we’re guided down the streets by the young Truffaut.
This is how we get to know 
the scene of the little human crimes
that make what we prefer to call a speakable tragedy— 
we laugh or cry or wince, but feel perfectly free to gossip:
we’ve known  these people from the ache of having lived.  

But this?  There is no landmark, no way to orient ourselves.
We could be anywhere: New York, London, Beirut, 
once lovingly called the Paris of the Middle East. 
Fragments of bone land blocks away
and streaks of blood on the sidewalk;
bullet holes dot the windows of the shoppes
and restaurants and cafes; and the body bags 
with policemen milling among them.

Then the eerie foreign siren sound we know from film,
though there are still no words to place us. 
All make part of the mise-en-scéne, 
a term we’ve never understood till now,
when lying awake at night
we try to avert our eyes from the shadows
we’d learned as children were formed  by accident
only to discover have been carefully arranged.  
​