1
Just the other day you bedazzled me again,
Turned me into a child-tourist,
Gaping with wonder at Notre-Dame
Under an impossibly blue sky
And a merciless sun.
I tried to capture you through my lens
No zoom would suffice.
No resolution fine enough to render
Your shades of grey.
I watched the tourists trying to capture you in frames
Freeze your eternal beauty like me
I stood tiny behind the flying buttresses
Of the spider-like cathedral
Stretching its legs out lazily in the afternoon sun
Its twisted gargoyles jumping out from all sides
At you.
I watched the old man playing hide and seek
(“Mais où est-elle? Elle est disparue”)
With his little French granddaughter
Amidst your trees
I watched the couples kissing on the benches
Studying pictures of you together
And speaking of love.
Just the other day I put down my camera
And decided to take you in.
2
Just the other day I saw the woman in the polka-dotted dress
With a phone glued to her ears
Crouching in your metro, tears rolling down her face
And the throngs that swept past her, unmindful.
Just the other day millions of your homeless
Came begging to me
“De l’argent, un ticket restaurant, quelque chose”
I gave them nothing.
Just the other day you overwhelmed me,
Bemused me with your indifference.
And reminded myself of my own.
3
Just the other day I returned to the Champs Elysées,
Run over by obnoxious tourists, oppressive.
Amidst the garish decadence your Arc de Triomphe gleamed
Your million street lights were aglow, flickering
all the way down to Place de la Concorde.
Just the other day I had stood here before,
Seen you before, taken the same picture.
And just once again I wondered what I would do
when I awoke from you.
4
Just the other day, a little Chinese girl in your train
With big almond eyes, a Dora haircut and a fan
Shied away from my gaze in a fit of squeals and giggles
And just today I took the metro home
And a bunch of Italian tourists sang Volare
In operatic voices like ghosts.
And just like that you won me over again.
5
Just today you suffocated me with your unbearable heat
And just now your skies roared thunderously
Erupting in big-drop-rainshowers
That belted down upon your tin roofs
Drowning out the atonal dance music
Of your irreverent residents
And their futile conversation.
∞
Just as always Paris
You tore me apart with your unrelenting sun
Froze me with your unrelenting winter
And played me like a heartless mistress
With your beautiful, unrelenting wind.
Kommentare