I had wanted to show you it all;
For you to revel
As much as I
In the magnificence I had seen
And felt.
Perhaps it was my fault-
In the extreme-
Maybe my blinkered view,
Like the race horse-
Seeing only the green of the track
And the glory of the win ahead
While missing the money hungry betters to the sides
And the jockey with whip behind.
But still,
The entire time your view
Saw only the concrete beneath your feet
As if you feared to place a step
Wrongly
And so lose your American footing.
You proved as cold
And impenetrable
As the surface upon which you walked,
Moved only by a metal banister
That you pleaded with me to photograph
Least your creativity
Failed to capture it.
Yet it was you who’d become captured;
Trapped in a foreign land
That you had longed to see
And yet failed-
So perfectly-
To look upon.
To create means more than just
Standing on the spot of inspiration.
You lolled about
Almost as inanimately
As the statues that surrounded us.
However,
Their shadows appeared to sway
In the sunshine
With so much more gusto than yours-
At least, until you fell needy
And your dull American twang
Rang out monotonously
To disrupt the ambience
And civility
That enchanted me
And washed over you
Like you were oil-based,
Cardboard cut-out,
Dull reflection
Of someone else-
Hardly remembered.
Alcohol loosened you
Along with athletic fumblings
In a beamed ceiling room
In Saint Paul,
But we were neither drunk
Nor naked
All the time,
Although it felt like I had stripped
Bare for you,
To show you my secret
Parisian life
That, malheurusement,
Over half the world shared.
In that tree-lined park
Below the radiant sunshine
I feigned sleep and watched you
Behind darkened shades
And wondered
Where you were.
You noted it strange how the boys played
Football
Instead of baseball
And I realized
That you had not even boarded the plane
Or removed yourself
From your ignorant States.
I chilled in the warmth,
Amid that sun-filled square,
On that Sunday afternoon
In July
As I watched you
Fall intrigued
By little boys at play
And your comic books
Became all the more
Disturbingly understandable.
