Poem Pour Francaise Et Paris

‘Le ciel est noir, la terre est blanche’-

I learned this poem, by Theophile Gautier,
in junior French at boys’ senior school,
aged twelve, from Pere Rene. A Lycee, pour maintenant, mon Coeur
academie et sportif.
I kept my heart and intellect and rugby love.
Maintenant-la terre est rouge. Now, is only that,
for a while.

Red, white, blue, colors of hope and value,
Sartre and Camus, Rimbaud, Verlaine.
Culture and the academy,
and love, that most of all. Pont Neuf.
Most of all Love. This city with its
boulangerie, and café and culture. Monet et Manet,
and Simone, a liberated woman.

Even Freud began there at the Salpetriere,
led to the layers of unconscious
and Lacan behind the D’orsay.
‘Where the Id is there the Ego shall be’?
‘ Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu,
quelle abandonment? ‘.

Another line is

‘La vierge penche’
Love conquers.
And I hear, Philosophy, Pensee.

Then another poem comes,
a memory of the Lycee, by Scollard-
‘ As I came down from Lebanon’.