Paris,
in between the
light and the legacy,
there is a silence waiting
to be heard.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This month is about looking at the shadow and light of Paris and the part I played in it, or the parts she played within me.
The lilt of the lavender that lingered for days,
long after, by the leaning, before the louvre,
the sweet consolation of candy floss cologne
that stayed on the pillow, after you had parted.
It is sometimes that simple; a scent to sail you back to me
as if I never left the garden,
as if I never left the comfort of your caress
though when it was there I could barely catch a breath.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
This month is looking back at the scent that will stay with me before I leave Paris. The courtyard of the Louvre was filled with a lavender covered tent for a Dior Fashion show during the Paris fashion week a few years ago.
Do you remember Paris on occasions when spring sweeps in
with its breath of those lost days, in that other life, before
we knew London together or what it would be like to part?
Do you, do you remember Paris, my little room, our lithe love
and the plans we painted onto canvases of comfort at night,
in a single bed, in a corner, before I lost my way and we lost us?
Those lazy days of hazy light that fell to nights at a water castle,
the name-deceptive metro, where kisses took us on to the dawn.
Do you remember the first spring of our song, how it warmed
its way into a summer of sipping wine by the old, new bridge
before we’d slumber in the shade, in the park, below that bridge,
on the first site of the city, while the waters ran away with time.
Remember the rainstorm, that Sunday morning, birds near broken,
I find it funny how I missed any warning in their fluttering?
Do you remember catching colour amid the concrete of la Jatte,
in the shadow of Seurat, on a Sunday morning, still sleeping,
when we stopped to make connections between balance and breath.
You sang of the dots within the water and the sky, on that ordinary day,
in a summer of simple, on a stroll on a Sunday, along an isolated island,
in a city where everything ordinary was suddenly so extraordinary.
Do you remember that silly single bed in the corner; I always woke up
stuck to the wall. The sofa, the table and the sunflowers of plastic;
so not what you’d imagined at all.
Do you dare to venture to those times departed, when not a minute
suggested what time would design or all that we’d have to let go?
Remember Paris, remember you,
remember me,
remember us.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.
We had met one night in Dublin, when I was still living in Paris, an Englishman putting on Les Miserables in my hometown while I was walking on the footsteps of Val Jean and the pretty ladies and the gang. We explored every inch of Paris and its musicality until I moved over to London and we learned how to get to know each other. We didn’t find forever but we will always have Paris.
Would he cry now for the concrete
that has taken root in reality,
this was never what inspired his impression.
I shiver sometimes when I slip to the edge of this shore
where George saw more in suggestion
and Stephen gave names to the dots.
Balance and harmony are hopes, not foundations
but you wanted me to lay down in all you had built
before you even knew my name.
We are all artists; drawing, singing, writing,
directing, searching for our spotlight on the stage
or along the shore.
You wanted us to be a monument but I knew
the concrete would crush my concern for creation.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
Georges Seurat painted on Sundays in 1884 on Ile de la Grande Jatte, an island on the edge of Paris. Before I left Paris in 1999, my boyfriend would come over from London on weekends where we would walk along this island looking for the light and balance Georges had painted in dots onto his canvas, while humming the tunes from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George.
One ordinary, rather hot summer night, nothing special,
nothing different, in my mind I ran my finger down
the line of hair that ran from your chest before disappearing
beneath your shorts as the breeze blew open your shirt
and I caught the smile in your eye as you read thoughts.
You, with your short dark hair amid a season of blondes
I was tiring of, you, who I never kissed or lay with,
who I never undressed outside of that dizzy dream.
Later that night, while fuelled on cocktails, you brushed
my finger along that same hair line, nothing said,
nothing promised, just that fine line between you and I,
you, with your eyes which shone that breathless night
towards a blue side of green, black jeans, red shirt
and a tan to stop just short of where that line disappeared.
You seemed like the first man I’d seen in such a long time
having been lost for a while in a sea of bleached boys,
all as harmless as they were hairless while I cavorted
about their sweet skins with careless concern for complacency.
But you looked like something else on that fortuitous night
as the setting sun sizzled and breezes briefly blew bodies bare.
That tremendous night when nothing really happened
except for the soft touch of that line I never managed to cross
and, more importantly, never managed to forget.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.
This month is about looking back and the life and lust of summer nights in Paris in order to move on. The bar was La Tropic, a gin fizz on the terrace, by Les Halles, the summer was 1998 but the location of both the line and the man are now a mystery only the summer stars can shine a light on.
It was this morning and yesterday, all at once,
a smell, a scent on the metro, in my nostrils,
a decent into memory, a reverie playing, replaying
while the Counting Crows played Round Here.
We sang our own song, once, but time, like the metro,
took us into different directions, with obligations
steered to other distractions; men and marriage,
movements and meanders, an Irish song we had sung,
you once sung, while I listened and then I left
for a while, while you stayed on, stayed on track.
But I came back and you were still there, still here,
Round Here, as the Crows sang, are still singing,
those Counting Crows; their words still ringing
in my ears, today, on the metro, with that scent
that opened a tunnel in time between yesterday
when we were young and today; wiser and wider.
All this motion, this morning, as my mind rushed
and passengers crushed onto carriages commuting,
lines crossing, junctions joining as I went to work
remembering who we were, I wore waistcoats even then
and you a brown coat that caressed your concerns.
I went to work, this morning, while traveling onwards,
along the same rails, in the same direction as before
but different too, some things old and some things new,
still me on the metro, still me and still, there’s you.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
Mary (the one on the brown coat) and I met at the Irish College my first time around in Paris and then I left for London while she stayed round here till I returned and we sang again, together, poetry this time, while finding our place.
Sitting in a park in Paris, France as kids
climb trees they’ll soon outgrow and birds busy
their feathers in a dance of freedom we’ll never know.
I fall through thoughts as someone tickles strings
on cords too distant to be discovered and wonder
where you sat; on the orange carpeted concerns
of the girl growing through her song of sorrow?
By the guy with the hat and harmony, probably,
the guy guarding his guitar from the bright light
of the, as yet, starless sky as if he knows already
how celebrity will one day cripple his creativity.
A blackbird bows before me, burrowing burdens
into the road, looking for crumbs since cast off,
for a little refuge, like you did, like we all do,
looking for a little distraction from the circling sun
and shining skins blustering under bland or blander.
Sitting in a park in Paris, France, as if in a trance
from 22 to 42, recalling how I first found favour
with following you; back room, no light, bedsit;
we were masters of the Marais, simple singletons,
senselessly sinking innocence into the marshes,
courting kisses of single sparks and rising over losses
we thought at the time to be insurmountable disasters.
But they were just dances, like these tiny birds
around me now, prances we perform, up and under,
over and through. We are all naked birds flirting
with honesty and invisibility under a sweltering sun,
sometimes recalled, sometimes forgotten before begun.
Sitting in a park in Paris, France, still trying
to understand the message in the melody
underlying and still trying to comprehend
the cords forged in the flesh of the boy so blue.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
This month is about Paris and letting her go. This photo was taken at the garden on front of the Musee Picasso, in Paris where I lived in an apartment right next door at the end of the 1990’s with a young Irish girl who introduced me to the music of Joni Mitchell. On my return to life in Paris in my 40’s, I wrote a series of poems, while sitting in parks during the summer, based on the albums of Joni and this was a nod to the album Blue. Like tattoos and all things that stick.
This was the original self portrait I used when I first posted this poem as Joni painted or photographed all her album art…
On a Monday, a muse filled Monday,
a sky-blue clarity carries me
like the water would never the river
from the sea back to the source.
My footsteps are still steady,
still stepping up on the spiral,
but memory can be mischievous
and, on the turn, I twist
past that door, long since shut,
by the temple with its turret staircase
where saint Therese tittered on the timbers
and I wonder if the sunflowers
I once painted onto its lifeless walls,
before I uncovered Vincent’s darker visions,
are still visible beneath all the time
that has grown over it since I put them there
at 22?
This, I think of, here today,
at 44
while growing and ageing and twisting
and turning from the call of those crows
that try so hard to claw at creativity.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
This month is about looking back in order to move on. An Irish girl named Therese (who introduced me to the music and magic of Joni Mitchell via her Casio keyboard) and I first lived in a little apartment at 98 rue Vieille du Temple, in Paris, in 1998 where I painted sunflowers on walls that never saw any sunlight. It was my first home in Paris and we had no idea at the time that crows were anything more than something to contrast the cotton candy clouds.
Stardust…
the fallout
from the flames,
a nebulous of what
was once known by names,
now falling, through time and space,
trailing dust, a trail of gentle dust
in place of touch, in lieu of place,
in lieu of hold and how we hold;
tighter and stronger, longer, after,
trying to hold a star, a fading star,
burning out before us
when all that’s left
is dust,
our brightest moments
now molecules of light,
blazing through the silence
of the night, but oh what a night.
Look up,
those who linger longer,
who fall and fret
before the great out-yonder,
look to the light
and not the loneliness,
the night is falling
but the light
is still unfolding.
Look up
star dust is falling
from on high,
writing names
across the sky
just for us
star dust…
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of Stars and Moons
In absence
lips lean out
in longing,
clouds gathering,
a chill in the air,
the warmth slipping.
Memory is a playful thing,
you tease and turn
over and back to before.
We kissed,
I feel it intensely,
I see it clearly
in the mirror
still marked
from a night now over.
Cold showers
call out
from the falling rain,
seasons come and go.
Moments linger longer.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of looking at clouds
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