My wife Marian was cheated of a life in Paris by Adolf Hitler. Her natural mother, a Jew, whom she never knew, was a performer in the Paris theatre before the war. By 1945, in a state of expectancy, she had fled to Montreal, in all probability to escape the Gestapo sweeps which would have consigned her to a death camp. Marian’s father, a Jewish attorney from Bordeaux, was with her mother in Canada, but whether he was her husband or only her lover, and whether they had fled together from France, or only met afterwards in Canada, is unknown, as are the reasons they gave up their infant daughter for adoption. Also unknown are why their daughter was then smuggled out of Canada to Kansas City, where a nice Presbyterian couple from Tulsa, Oklahoma adopted her.
But Fate on occasion offers up poetic justice. Marian’s adopted father was a seismologist for a small oil company, and in the late 1950s was sent on extended assignments to North Africa and France. As a result, at the age of twelve, Marian spent two years attending French schools in Tunisia, Algeria and Paris, becoming quickly fluent in the language and steeped, as only a child can become in such an abbreviated time, in Parisian culture. In later years, as a graduate student in medieval manuscript paleontology, on various research grants, she spent weeks at a time poring over 13th-century Apocalypse manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
On one of these research trips I accompanied her as her husband. Her cousin owned a small, elegant hotel in the Passy district, haunted by Americans since the time of Franklin, and within easy walking distance of Trocadero, a local outdoor market, and the Bois de Boulogne — and there we stayed for about nine days at a pittance, taking our meals in small out-of-the-way cafes unknown to the tourists or, when we needed to be frugal, fortifying ourselves in our room with fresh prizes from the market: baguettes, cheese, wine and fruit.
It was my first time in Paris and, having no responsibilities beyond exploring as much of the city on foot as possible, I set myself the goal of writing one descriptive sonnet for each day that I was there. Instead of a camera I carried a notebook and pen. My first sonnet was written the first evening we arrived, after just landing in our hotel room, and before we had ventured onto the street
OFF THE RUE NICOLO
In a small hotel room close to the Seine,
a woman leaned over a casement sill,
rested her arms on the wrought-iron rail
and, half-asleep, raised her face to the rain.
The sheets were disheveled where she had lain
and the dress that she had tossed on a chair
fell in yellow linen folds to the floor
like a swath of lilies. Now and again,
slivers of sun were emerging through gray,
though few of these brightened the alleyway
or buildings that shadowed her view like cliffs.
And when she looked up she saw, very high,
hundreds of traceries pattern the sky–
a cloud of elusively darting swifts.
We quickly developed a habit of spontaneous adventuring, such as the time late at night near the Pont Neuf when we were drawn into lower depths of the Metro by the sweetly seductive strains of a disheveled young jazzman playing a portable amplified guitar with a battery pack and speaker that he carried like a small suitcase, a street musician on the move. When the train came he got on board and we followed, and the electric music he so effortlessly played matched perfectly the rocking and swaying of the car.
IN THE METRO
Through a wrought-iron arch, down littered stairs,
we entered beneath the streets at midnight,
threading our way through the hard-edged light
of an endlessly twisting corridor
where chord-progressions of swirling color
like mother-of-pearl pervaded the air–
then, reaching the platform, we found him there,
a hollow-cheeked man playing jazz guitar
and drenching the chamber in liquid chords–
and when the train came he slipped on board
where, immersed in the tunnel’s streaming light,
he stood in a dreamy repose and played
rapturous strains as the car rocked and swayed
and plunged through the subterranean night.
As one who has lived most of his life well below the poverty line and who has been twice cast among the ranks of the homeless, I cannot help a certain tendency to view my surroundings from the level of the street. In Paris this was particularly so as the literature of Paris has so often been inseparable from the annals of the poor — Hugo, Zola, Michel, Murger, Sue, Vallès, as well as the ex-patriots Hemingway, Orwell, Miller, Ginsberg & Corso. In particular there was a 19th-century Parisian poet, often impoverished himself, who made the poor of Paris his chosen subject. One of my sonnets describes an imagined encounter between this poet and myself, and details of our exchange are derived from descriptions of him by several who knew him. As he wrote under an alias, and only just barely escaped complete obscurity, I do not identify him directly, although his name is embedded in the text of the poem.
ALONG THE RUE VICTOR MASSE
In a crude argot of repellent slang
from the gutter, mixed with jargon unheard
since the days of Villon, he sang and slurred
discordant refrains to all who’d listen,
dark, disquieting verses delivered
in a biting, vitriolic harangue.
His cavernous eyes appeared to fasten
on nothing at all, and a sneering grin
like rictus affixed to his bloodless face.
He sang of the streets and the alleyways,
of nights under bridges along the Seine,
of cravings and sickness and scrounging francs
till I felt obliged to offer a coin–
he smirked and spat on the pavement for thanks.
Three other sonnets from my visit to Paris describe the poor. Two are of individuals whom I met and spoke with, but this next sonnet describes what a friend of ours, who was living in Paris on a shoestring in the 1950s, saw most mornings from the window of her rented room:
ALONG THE RUE SAINT-DOMINIQUE
In another country, in later years,
she often remembered the mornings spent
surveying the street from her balcony–
the cats that curled beside bundled figures
of vagrants huddled on warm-air vents,
or the lean and shadowy toms that prowled
from the alleyways to preen in the sun,
attending each tattered laceration
from a night of mauling and being mauled.
And, across the street, when the small cafe
would open, with waiters setting up chairs,
cats would materialize out of air
to crowd at the doorway, collectively
meowing for their petit dejeuner.
The next two describe my own encounters.
IN THE JARDIN DES TUILERIES
Decrepit and wrinkled as an old root,
with dirt begriming his skin and his clothes,
I almost thought him a statue at first,
so completely did birds envelope him.
They lit on his shoulder, his knee and wrist,
on the bench and ground and toe of his boot–
pompous old pigeons and squabbling sparrows,
of all commonplace birds the commonest.
Yet all by his crumbs were equally blessed
as they used his arm for a crooked limb
or crowded around with skitter and hop.
Nor with birds alone did charity end–
as I passed him by he spoke as a friend
and offered a crust, but I didn’t stop.~~~
ALONG THE RUE PASSY
Amid noises of street and marketplace,
the fluted trebles of someone playing
Mozart for coins. Overhead, the sighing
of fragrant lindens that shade the terrace.
Nearby, the tinkling of silver and glass,
the murmurous tones of stylish couples
exchanging intimate talk at tables.
Unexpectedly, an evocative face
so hollow-eyed and hauntingly lovely
I marvel, inadvertantly staring–
a drawn and willowy woman slowly
drifting through elegant tables, imploring
the alms of a morsel, with fingertips
lifted in virtual prayer to lips.
The theme of Parisian poverty and poetry is continued in a long untitled poem which I undertook some years ago, never finished, but still hope to resume. The opening rough stanzas set the scene:
Night after hideous night, underneath
some cruelly elegant bridge on the Seine,
sleeping on cobbles, rolled up in a coat,
he imagines how it would feel to float
face-down in the current, sinking beneath
the surface, rising and sinking again.He sits up and shakes his head to dispel
the fog from his brain and looks out upon
another disconsolate Paris dawn
arising over the Seine ~ oh, to get
a shot of coffee, a shred of baguette,
an hour’s parole from this homeless hell…A discarded flyer blows up against
the toe of his boot; he unfolds and reads:
In Bohemia’s Ninth Circle expect
all meaning eroded, all purpose wrecked,
all beauty reduced to embellishments…
He wads and tosses it into the weeds.Metaphysics is all very well, he scoffs,
but let me have something to pawn or spend,
my stomach is bleeding. He staggers off,
marring the fragile calm with his cough,
till he vanishes round the river’s bend.
No obituary will mark his end,or anthology hold in crypted print
his dark utterance, but this is the least
of his worries, with heaven clouding up
and a cold wind gnawing at every rent
in his ancient coat. He prowls like a beast,
dreaming of toast and a steaming cup.At a busy spot he establishes
his post in a doorway, setting his hat
at his feet and, in a gratingly flat
monotone, punches out verse after verse
of poetry like an extended curse,
pounding fist into palm for emphasisuntil a policeman, plainly annoyed,
prods him along. He recovers his hat
and, muttering imprecations, stomps off
along the storefronts, a scowling tough
whom two little boys, a matron, a cat,
veer quickly across the street to avoid.After half a block he stalls . . . what to do?
His stomach gnaws on itself and his knees
begin to buckle ~ he shudders and breaks
a clammy sweat and his every joint aches ~
altogether such are his miseries
that he might attribute them to the fluexcept they are too well-known to mistake
for anything other than what they are:
the ill effects of a catch-as-can diet,
with blood-sugar levels in full riot,
spiking and plunging ~ he shivers and shakes
and his breathing becomes irregular.Unsteadily, slowly, he makes his way
to the harbor lights of a little park
in search of a nook; in the semi-dark
shade of a linden he stakes out a bench
where, hugging his knees, he attempts to staunch
a flood of old nauseau and dismay,rocking himself like a dying child
keeping the dragons at bay… Pity’s sake,
look at you sitting there, all in pieces! ~
(a smoke and tequila voice, with traces
of melancholy like a mortal ache).
He looks up to find a tall, disheveled,ivory-throated siren of the streets
regarding him with concern. Hullo, Rose,
he says to her weakly, how have you been?
Jesus, she mutters, c’mon, on your feet.
Can you make it to my place, you suppose?
My god, you’re a pitiful specimen.(excerpt of a fragment, to be continued….)
And finally, a poem about that most quintessentially Parisian of subjects: disappointment in love. Though the title refers to a pavane, the poem was composed to, and is most meaningfully read alongside, one of Satie’s more bleakly wistful pieces.
PAVANE FOR A BRIEF AFFAIR
It is true that I was obsessed with her,
but where, I ask, is the shame in that?
It may be that we were husband and wife
although, as neither of us were inclined
to speak of the matter, I no longer knew.
She would disappear for no reason at all,
forsaking all my attentions
for the solace of cold, indifferent streets.Night after worrisome night I would walk,
imbued in the scent of her hair until
by some wry mischance we would pass unbeknownst
on a rainy boulevard, peering from under
tilted umbrellas, her startled eyes
soft in the moistened air.At times,
when the lindens that lined the streets were strewing
their violet air-borne fragrances
and the night was limned
with a drifting implication of rain,
we would wordlessly conspire to meet
at a nondescript café by the Seine.Invariably she was late, appearing
as an afterthought in the open door,
immersed in a rain-grey dress, requesting,
as always, a table quite to herself,
an empty glass, a partial pear.Our conversations were cryptic, consisting
of tentative phrases on napkins which
the waiters would whisk away with our plates,
all our guarded avowals crumpled up
and cast amid crumbs.At other tables
the patrons appeared as little more
than transitory impressions, scarcely
occupying their places, sometimes
vanishing altogether.As minutes
conceded to hours, I’d watch her watching
the green and milky nimbus that swirled
in the mesmerizing depths of her glass.
The hiss of the street through a lowered blind
found no response in her face, while her eyes,
for all their gray, unspoken sorrow,
asked nothing of me, nor of anyone.
For this, above all, I desired her.And always, whenever she took her leave,
I would manage to miss her, turning to speak
the moment she stepped away . . , a glimmer
of falling rain through a darkened door.
