Jean Follain
Some evenings a poet will turn
Down a ride and walk
Home from the banquet
Where he was honored
By members of a boat club
Still feeling the roughness
Of their hands in his hand
As he walks in his pocket
The medallion they gave him
Already forgivably forgotten
It will be that hour when
A woman changes for dinner
Before the bathroom mirror
One earring in one ear
The other in her hand
Turning her head to hear
What she thought her husband
Said from the bedroom
Where he stands wiping his glasses
On his untucked dress shirt
They don’t know that
They won’t make it
To dinner because they will
Hit a poet on the way
Though even as he is bleeding
Out the poet will go on walking
Invisibly along the Seine
While in the restaurant where
They had reservations
The silverware enters the dark
Of others’ mouths