I love Paris. Being
partially deaf, I don’t have an ear for languages, but people there don’t seem
to mind and even warm to my schoolboy-like efforts to speak French.
In this, the (early)
winter of my years, I don’t get to visit Paris as often as I would like, not
least because I can’t afford to stay in hotels for more than the occasional
weekend.
Ah, but in the spring and summer of my years …
While some holiday
memories blur with time, others are as vivid as favourite dreams that have
taken on reality…and won. Oh, their victory (in real terms) may well have been short-lived, but remain no less sweet
for that.
Written years ago, I rediscovered
this poem only recently among a pile of old papers I was throwing out and (slightly)
revised it.
PRECIOUS MOMENTS or G-A-Y, SKATING ON STARS
We met in old Paris,
my dreamtime lover and I,
crossing the Pont Neuf,
about to pass each other by
when the moon, it fell
in the water, and we both
paused
to stare, and that was the start
of our gay
love affair
Rain pouring down,
a cascade of shooting stars;
the sky in the Seine,
couldn’t believe our eyes;
his hand grasped mine,
hearts beating fast, total
strangers
no more, and that was the
start of our gay
love affair
City, taken us to its heart
we skated on stars in galaxies
only dreamers know
for dodging myriad umbrellas
in streets where even rain
is a treasure the world’s
lovers get
to share, and that was the start
of our gay
love affair
We went to his apartment
and I still didn’t know his
name,
re-working ‘mad’ and ‘sane’
against a backdrop of Caillebotte
copycats brush stroking into
our every moment, time enough
to spare, and that was the
start of our gay
love affair
We made love in a
four-poster
as if le demain was but a password
only we two ever knew,
and would never say out loud
for fear the dream fade;
hours later, vacation over, rain
starting
to clear, a rainbow all that’s left of our gay
love affair
[Paris, April 1986.]
Copyright R. N. Taber; 20013
[Note: Caillebotte (4th stanza, line 4) is a reference to Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), a French artist perhaps best known for his painting, Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877). Incidentally, many of his other paintings and drawings are of male bodies, often with their faces concealed, conveying a homo-eroticism that has given rise in more recent times to speculation that he may have been gay.]
Copyright R. N. Taber; 20013
[Note: Caillebotte (4th stanza, line 4) is a reference to Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), a French artist perhaps best known for his painting, Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877). Incidentally, many of his other paintings and drawings are of male bodies, often with their faces concealed, conveying a homo-eroticism that has given rise in more recent times to speculation that he may have been gay.]
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