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Paris 2001
by Eve Worth


To find myself
on that rather gray
Friday, walking beside
the swift waters
of the Seine, feels still
unreal. As if I woke
entirely from a dream
and all of its people
all its strangeness
its colors
surround me
through the day
whispering to me
as though nothing were odd
or unusual.
As I pass the Hotel de Ville,
move quickly down the Rue
Rivoli, the last twenty years fall
away like vague imaginings.
I must struggle
to hide within myself the urge to cry out
with joy. How it pleases me,
this city with its unquestioned pride
in itself. To touch its medieval
ramparts. To ponder its wrongheaded chic.
How merely being here scours out the dustbin
of my brain. Sweeps out the fear,
the pointless grudges. Sets me off
on a new path of imagined love and beauty.
For everyone
feels the force of love
in Paris. Everyone becomes
a native Parisii
building fires on an island
between two arms of a rushing river.
Feeling the lavender-cream
clouds moving lower
and lower until they crush
all that is dark
and brooding from our consciousness
leaving only the accordion sound
rising from a curtained junk,
and the reassurance of a magnificent city
bathed in a clean 
golden light.

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