DANIEL WADE
Ici C’est Paris
(Baudelaire at 200)
Far from the slack-jawed lookout of gargoyles
and the belfries’ hourly clang, far
from the bistro’s sulphurously-lit
terrace and the Seine, briefly mirror-clear
against a livid laudanum sky, far
from boulanjeries and airbrushed views
of Île Saint-Louis from an AirBnB pied-à-terre
where neon slithers over drenched asphalt,
far from the demi-monde burning in autumn’s
low fervour, you are reminded this is still your city
of daedal arcades, you who were lulled
by the golden melting point
of a hashish smog, laureate of amber dusk
and of the traffic jam’s low-gear chansonnier
serenading the cathedral’s smoking husk.
Far from the firemen who broke through her
wrought-iron portals as Le Gardes Français
might, smoke whirling a grey monolith
skyward, and the flèche in its oaken acuity
like a smouldering pillar stoked by God,
collapsing with grimmest of ceremony
far from vault bricks plummeting and leaden
ribs fractured, you are reminded of hailstones
that rattle like coffee beans in a mason jar
off zinc rooftops, the horses you can no longer
hear trotting apocalyptically off the cobbles
and the copper, sea-green statue
of the aporetic disciple helicoptered off
for repairs, fodder for tourists’ Insta feeds,
here is your city’s riot-prone heart,
now ablaze with neon, her ossuaries cached
with aeons of tibias and femurs, shivering
archive for the dead. Odd to think that,
as long as the light from our headlamps crawls
over graffiti, civilisation is still near,
even far below the familiar rumbles
of the métro. Far from the laser light’s blinding,
ultra-violet sweep, from neon-painted faces
and smoke-bombed walls and sweaty
light, far from the PAs thudding loudly as war,
far from the DJ spinning a remixed web
from the turntable, from the damp floor
of the city’s graffitied bowels, you can crawl
on your stomach through cubelike tunnels,
and, rattling in concert, all these ivory skulls.
You might turn a corner, only for death to offer
you a cigarette, perhaps even greet the skeletal
reaper as a friend, its notched scythe threshing
the soul-crop at characteristic random. Yet we
have the privilege of paralysis, the luxury
of lawlessness, ‘’til we see for ourselves
that rosy dusk tingeing the arrondissement
like an Impressionist’s fleeting blur,
and wave at the cruise boats paddling
under the Pont Neuf bridge, and remember
this is your city still, Charles, unrecognisable
as it might be, C’est La Ville Lumière.
Once the flavour of beaujolais wine dissolves
with each oenophilic swallow, might we regain
the city in your name, O patron saint of ivory
skulls that keep the catacombs fully stocked,
our hands placed on scorched balustrades?
The morning fog hovers thin as a veil
that perhaps once sheathed the shapely limbs
of Herodias’ daughter, though not enough
to see clearly. Bloody paint splatters
colonial statues, a colonnade’s bone-white trusses
glisten as graffiti smears them like oil and fear
hovers in doorways and parking meters
and masks hang below chins. Do you smell
the courage on my breath? It’s lingered for hours,
drowned out by sweat and craft lager,
smoke slurred by the wind, petrol fumes snarled
and heavy aftershave. We are the generation
that gave up on intimacy by all accounts,
calmly eating lunch under patio heaters as glass shards
season the pavement, but I’m not here for volunteer
cleanup crews rinsing down a graffiti-splattered
plinth from where the statue of a long-dead trafficker
of human cargo was toppled, nor for the boarded-up
windows of La Roche Posay, Le Coq Sportif
and Gucci, each entrance and exit manned by flics.
Though I have opal scales for eyes these days,
ears immune to the brush of your whisper,
there are your verses, black-eyed, cravated flaneur,
slum socialite, to whose verses my reddened eyes
keep returning, that intrigue, mystify, lure
and even, after two centuries, inspire awe again.
Winner the Hennessy New Irish Writing for April 2015 in The Irish Times, Daniel Wade and his poetry and short fiction have featured in over two dozen publications since 2012. A prolific performer, Daniel has featured at many festivals including Electric Picnic, Body and Soul, and the 2019 International Literature Festival (ILFD). His debut collection, Rapids has just come out.
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