Lyric Poetry

The language of the absolutely lonely man is lyrical, i.e. monological.
-- Lukacs

I am walking in Paris thinking of Pound's subway faces --
"Petals against a black wet bough" -- and seeing
Caillebotte's famous painting on my Art Institute mug
they color my steps toward the Musee de Orsay
the premiere museum of French Impressionism
no offal, no dead cats are visible in the rushing gutters
just slick cobblestone, macadam and shushing mute of tires
this is beauty -- morning in a Sunday spring rain, Paris
gray black reflecting back gray and black.

Apollinaire's words spill down across memory's page
like the rain, but the drops reach the street
before I find the bottom of the falling lines
suspended, they have already puddled
Monet's quick-daubed paint now draws light
from recessed bulbs and cream walls a mile from Notre Dame
I admit his brush layering blue onto a yellow wasn't fast enough
to maintain that moment's monument
how then did the painters preserve the cathedral
I searched out their angles on the restored facade.

I have decided: poetry cannot make nothing happen
it may be after Stevens' "imperishable bliss"
the overheard expression of "being loved alone"
but poetry is nostalgia making, the promise of the fix
the chains of words, lines, link-space-link
that repeat ends endlessly and give comfort
tourists on the high bridge look down
for Whitman's gull curling over the barges.

My pace remembers the schoop of windshield wipers
my feet are cold and I'm thinking of a dry café
the Musee is closed -- "Flooded" the signs say --
we find a dry train to Versailles
"the palace is always warm and bright" she says.

-- Scott MacPhail