Rani Drew
Permutations
There is too much romance about Paris.
The name is magic enough, not to mention
the wine, the cafés the panache in speech.
History hovers at street corners. Napoleon
is everywhere; the kings may have become
hazy but not the bourgeois revolutionary.
After all we are still in the bourgeois
phase of history.
Illusions abound in patisseries. Speech
is sweeter on the ear than confected
chocolate on the tongue. Apartments
are palaces, their porters Masters of Ceremony,
they check the incomers for manners,
modes and propriety.
The inside - once the town apartment
of a country aristocrat,
it boasted the latest architecture.
French windows would open out
to a world breezy, narcissistic,
and selfconscious.
The streets were not so privileged,
teeming with horses, criminals and runaways.
Carriage bells and sellers’ calls mixed
uncomfortably. People, slums and sewers
dared to overrun the city. It was dangerous
to display your wealth and privilege.
No such danger now. Everyone
is bourgeois, petit or privileged.
Past slogans still echo in the air.
Words have changed to movements
which take many to places once held by the few.
Here is enough to reconstruct history.
Page(s) 17-18
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