Père Lachaise
On our last night in Paris
I hate how that line sounds
I took you to Père Lachaise
It was New Year’s Eve
Elsewhere the living were
Preparing to celebrate turning
The old year under the new
While I had in mind graves
I wanted to see – Proust’s,
Wilde’s, Apollinaire’s, Chopin’s
They weren’t there of course
They were in the novels
The plays the poems the nocturnes
How fast I walked us past
The anonymous dead who weren’t
Anonymous of course
I could have stopped and failed
To pronounce their names right
But I was only interested
In the brilliant dead
The ones on the map on my phone
I asked for directions to Proust’s
It took us the shortest way
And then there it was
Like a black shark surfacing
Then onto Wilde’s from which
They had hosed off all the kisses
Then Apollinaire’s
With his calligram of a heart
Like an inverted flame
You followed me dutifully
The difference between us
That I thought it mattered
To stand where the least of
What they had been remained
While you knew that it didn’t
I thought you would care
About Chopin at least
Dark was falling by the time
We found him
I said something about
The bones of his beautiful hands
Their stillness now
Or maybe I only thought it
It didn’t matter
You weren’t listening to me
You were listening
To the black birds squawking
In the trees above us
You held your phone up
And took a field recording
I should have known
Then what I know now
That we belonged
In different realms
You and I
I in the realm of earth
You in the realm of air