At last you’re weary of these ancient beats

*

Oh, Eiffel Tower, shepherdess, your flock of bridges bleats

*

You’ve had enough of basking in antique historic glory

Here even the tin lizzies seem defunct and desultory

Only the Church has stayed brand new, religious adulation

Remains sincere as the hangars at the Port of Aviation

*

The Church alone in Europe is neither old nor sad

And the modern man of the hour is our Roman Holy Dad

While you transfixed by these windows’ silent observation

Are too ashamed to go to worship and to face confession

You pore through catalogs brochures and flyers that propose

A morning dole of poetry – there’s newsprint for your prose

You choose two-bit subscriptions to tales of crime and gore

Or Biographies of Prominent Men or over a thousand more

*

I found a pretty little street when the day had just begun

New and spanking clean she was and bugling in the sun

Executives and union men and babes from the steno pool

Monday to Saturday eight to five like herring in a school

To the triple morning whistle hustle rush and hark

But noontime’s blustery clock can only give a bark

The messages on signs the writing of the streets

Brash posters and graffiti squawk like demented parakeets

I’m smitten by the charm of this corridor light industrial

Extending from Avenue des Ternes to Rue Aumont-Thiéville

*

You’re nothing but a kid in a newborn street so cute

In your ma’s homemade little blue and white sailor suit

You’re so devout and with your pal René from class

There’s nothing you love near so much as a good high mass

Past curfew and the lights turned low you sneak from the dormitory

To pray all night ecstatic in the chapel oratory

While unquenchable desirable deep amethyst dream

Christ’s glory flames on in the votive candles’ gleam

That spotless lily that we all must grow

The red-haired torch resisting any blow

The mater dolorosa’s boy streaked with cruelty

It’s the ever-living densely leafed prayer tree

Our double gallows of honor and eternity

The mystic six-pointed celestial star

God who dies on Friday and on Sunday lives once more

Better than a pilot Christ soars into the blue

He holds the world’s unbroken record for altitude

*

Christ the pupil of my eye

Pupil of twenty centuries his lesson is clear

Bird-morphed like Christ this modern era leaps into the air

The devils in their deep abyss are curiously spying

They say it looks like Simon Magus of Judea flying

He’s just a jailbird, quoth they, so why should he be free

But the angels gambol around on the holy high trapeze

Icarus Enoch Eli Apollinarus of Thyane

Hover all around the very first aeroplane

They part to respect the Eucharist propelled by the Holy Ghost

With a squadron of attendant priests elevating sacred hosts

On unfolded wings in time the plane will rise

As at least a million swallows wing into the sky

At full speed come crows owls and raptor hawks

From Africa pink flamingos and marabout storks

The fabulous Roc famed in legend and mystery

Flies in with Adam’s skull the oldest head in history

An eagle swoops down with a cloud-rending shriek

While petite hummingbirds flit in from Amérique

The pihis of China incredibly supple

Having only one wing must fly as a couple

Here comes the immaculate dove all transcendent

Escorted by lyre-birds and peacocks resplendent

The self-begetting phoenix who burns on his pyre

For a moment casts a veil with ashes from its fire

From their perilous rocks the Sirens depart

Approaching in song harmonized in three parts

And all phoenix pihis Roc hummingbirds eagle

Join in the flight of the mechanical marvel

*

Now you walk through Paris lonely in the crowd

As the herds of green buses bellow out loud

Your throat is tight with love’s bitter anguish

As if the very thought of love would forever vanish

If you lived in ancient times you would become a monk

But the mere idea of prayer puts you into a funk

Self-mocking your laughter crackles with brimstone

The sparks of your mirth paint a rich golden tone

Your life’s canvas hangs in some gallery’s shadows

Sometimes you step up to observe it quite close

*

Today you walk in Paris where the women are tainted

It was – let me not remember – the day that beauty faded

*

Haloed in fervent flames Our Lady spied me at Chartres

I was flooded by His blood at the Sacred Heart of Montmartre

To hear the Good News stirs up my unease

The love that I suffer is a social disease

And your haunting image persists in sleeplessness and pain

Whenever I am near you it happens yet again

*

Now there you are on warm Mediterranean sands

Among the lemon trees that bloom all year round

Among your closest friends you take a little cruise

There's one from Nice one from Menton and a couple from Toulouse

In the depths we cringe at the frightful octopi

In the kelp swim the fishes with the mark of the Christ

*

The outskirts of Prague here you are at an inn

A rose on the table and you feel content

Instead of working on your story you pause to reread it

In the bud of the rose lies a Japanese beetle

You find your startled portrait in the jewels at Saint-Vitus

The day you saw yourself there you could have died of sadness

You look like Lazarus shocked by the stark daylight

The needles on the ghetto clock are moving counter-clockwise

You also slowly regress in the rhythm of your years

As you climb Hradchin Heights and you prick up your ears

To catch Czech tavern songs drifting up from the dark

*

Here you are in Marseille in the watermelon market

*

Here you are in Coblence at the Hotel of Trolls

*

And here beneath Japanese magnolias at Rome

*

Here in Amsterdam with a plain girl you find pretty

She’s engaged to a freshman at Leyden University

Cubicula locanda one can rent a room in latin

I remember three days there and in Gouda in passing

*

You are back in Paris with the judge at the lock-up

They treat you like a thug as they slap on the handcuffs

*

You have taken your trips full of downers and highs

Till you noticed the coming of age and the lies

You’ve found that love hurts at thirty as at twenty

I’ve lived like an idiot and wasted plenty

You can’t look at your hands a sob struggles to break free

It’s you it’s my desire it’s everything that’s frightened me

*

With tears in your eyes you watch the poor bound overseas

Nursing their babes and praying firm in their beliefs

Their odors fill the station waiting rooms at Saint-Lazare

Like the wise men of old they have faith in their star

They’re off to Argentina to try to make a lot of money

And come back rich to this land of milk and honey

Against their hearts a family presses an old scarlet comforter

Yes our dreams are as unworldly as that comforter

Some of the travelers break down here and stay

In hovels in the Rue des Écouffes or the Rue des Rosiers

I’ve seen them in the twilight street as they take the evening air

Like pieces on the checkerboard they make little hops

Mostly Jews the women wear wigs to cover their hair

Or crouch anemically in the back of darkened shops

*

Standing at a crappy bar in a place for hard-core boozers

You sip a nickel’s worth of crummy coffee among the losers

*

One night you’re in a posh restaurant like a nabob

*

Those broads aren’t too bad but they’ve got something to think of

The ugliest among them’s given heartache to some slob

*

She’s the daughter of a constable from the Channel Isles

*

I hadn’t seen her hands but I notice they’re hard and vile

*

I’m filled with pity to see those ugly marks above her hips

*

Poor bitch horrible laughter I humiliate my lips

*

You’re alone in the dawn about to break

The milkmen clink their bottles in the streets

*

Night vanishes like a sweet mulatto

Attentive little Leah or Ferdie the castrato

*

And you drink this alcohol that makes life flicker

This life you quaff like a burning liquor

*

On foot you wander towards Auteuil pointing ever homeward

To sleep among your fetishes from Togo and Dahomey

They too are Christs of other shapes and alien belief

Of darkest hopes and longings but still Christ in brief

*

Adieu, God bless, honey

*

Sunny guillotine, sonny

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