Ici et là
Pointilliste Paris tachetée light and leaf green
with filigreed French trees arced in the air.
Flaneurs dans les Champs et boulevards.
So blossoms the joy of my half and half life
bras dessus bras dessous with Grand-mère adorée.
Paris my love, my first, my worst heartbreak
in danger crossing a zebraed safe zone.
Hit - smash - run un-pursued our justice denied,
mon coeur crucified, my grandmother died.
Claque the door then stiffen the lip Brit;
cut mother roots clean - Molière, Maupassant gone.
L'âme française stowed away viscerally deep
in exchange for a bitterness drunk by the pint.
Yet that bilingual snake's tongue still tangles around
stabbing my English sang-froid.
Le temps passe time heals pain loses its hold as
l'Hexagone's gravitational pull
offers « pastis, un coup d'rouge, allez viens on s'amuse ».
A balm neither half of my mind can refuse.
Garrigue, pinède and anchoïade oil;
madeleines of my life for instant recall -
meditérranéenne essences pierce fort interieur
with a blue-bright salt light luminously clear.
Yet the comfort of clouds, whose droplets of hope
refresh the Isles of my youth, tap root me back
to some corner of Albion, forever untranslatable home.
Bilingual, bicultural bipartisan being
so lucky to belong ici et là here and there;
merci for both halves - beloved grandma and grand-mère.
Page(s) 24
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The