Father

Though you struggle with the fisherman's net to salvage what is left of that sea-memory, Paris sits in your heart like a jewel. Sometimes, I see you with lightning clarity, striding up Rue Blanche with a canvas rolled under your arm, your head blazing, turning to look at beautiful women in heels, the boarded shutters of 54 Rue Lepic, or a stain on the sidewalk that appears to you as two lovers wrapped in the lion's kiss. I see you at midnight under the Pont Neuf, working with spotlights on your Trojan horse of wood and old editions of Le Figaro. Yes---the women came like mice in the night, sneaking home to parents or lovers in the pale dawn river-light, where sleeping bodies lay with bottles and accordions by the quay. And what street wasn't pinned by your gaze, what white surface escaped the blood and charcoal of your violence? Paris bowed and curtsied, but you laughed. There was no time for tea and cakes, wine glasses and peep shows, or fine-tuned selections of the age. I saw you in the garden the other day. Your hair was white and you walked with a stoop, but you stood by your sculptures--- monstrous twins in concrete--- caressing their quarter-century of nakedness, gently caressing those two survivors.

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