the city that awakes my Polish melancholic heart and makes it breathe...Only Paris in September, even in just two days, can fill me up with poetry to last. Too little time in between work related meetings but enough to visit my two favourite couples...
One cooks me an evening meal and listens patiently to the stories of my confused heart...I am reminded that American expat women who move from Rome to Paris have depth, courage and wisdom they share freely with younger expat sisters...
I visit another couple early in the morning at Montparnasse..Simone and Jean Paul.
The Death of Lovers
We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes,
Divans as deep as graves, and on the shelves
Will be strange flowers that blossomed for us
Under more beautiful heavens.
Using their dying flames emulously,
Our two hearts will be two immense torches
Which will reflect their double light
In our two souls, those twin mirrors.
Some evening made of rose and of mystical blue
A single flash will pass between us
Like a long sob, charged with farewells;
And later an Angel, setting the doors ajar,
Faithful and joyous, will come to revive
The tarnished mirrors, the extinguished flames.
Poem by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
