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Writer's pictureAmruta

Poem: 'Fragments d'un discours Parisien'

Updated: Jan 7, 2021



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.

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