Paris joie de vivre
One summer, my husband took the kids to the wrong museum,
Doped up with eye drops in bed, I told him the Orangerie, at the end of the Tuileries,
where the water lilies were but he took them to the Musee D’Orsay
where there discovered Isis, the Egyptian goddess,
Instead of Parc Monceau, we headed to the Cite des Sciences et des I’Industrie
Where I sat on a bench with my eyes closed,
the drone of David Attenborough dubbed in French bored the children,
the run on the park outside more invigorating,
they chose McDonald’s because they felt that
In Paris the macarons are quite expensive
and the queues much longer, mostly of Chinese tourists who were not us.
Champs Elysees is really not our favourite street
the shops are crass, and it’s truly overrated.
The coffees bad. The side streets always better.
They climbed up the Eiffel Tower, strong legs like iron.
The reward being Belgian mussels after,
Vintage melodrama at puces de st ouen, ‘I want them all’ I scream.
The man selling second-hand books along the Seine- such gems,
the break dancers on the Ile St Louis more entertaining,
the bowl of pho, steaming hot after the long metro ride across the city to the tiny Chinatown,
comfort on a cold December,
the quiet of the Marais streets after 9’ clock,
holding hands outside our favourite cafe,
the chime of quiet empty churches,
a bare green bench on the Luxembourg Gardens,
summer music wafting through our little garden,
The ratatouille delighting the palates of young gourmands,
Our Paris joie de vivre.
Along the Seine
On my birthday, one year,
when trees were bare, in the absence of snow,
the side-walks dry and neatly swept,
I made my parents walk
along the Seine
with us.
We started at the patch of bare green under the Eiffel tower, in Arr 7.
took photos~ star-jumps, poses, selfies,
ogled over carousels
that make Paris pretty
what a lovely walk that was: on the Left Bank,
looking over the right, the majesty of monuments,
the grand and petit palaces,
across to Elysee Palace,
observations
of an immensely great city,
benches, boats, love locks, little play patches for children.
We walked until the roundabout where
The Tuileries started,
The line for the Orangerie was two miles long,
so we took pictures, laughed and decided
to go for Belgian mussels instead.
Quite a long walk for children and their grandparents,
but what I learned most,
about getting older,
was not the presents or the candles on your cake,
nor your pictures of frozen memories,
but the people in your life,
that you keep with you.
whom you love, because that’s the way it is,
wrapped up in scarves and gloves,
with boots and snug clothing,
my parents seemed happier, worldier, less old,
in the cold.
if I could freeze-frame one shot of our walk along the Seine,
it would be of my parents, holding hands,
on my 42nd birthday,
blessings, like balloons floating up into the clouds,
as I say thank you, thank you, thank you, amen,
like a neverending litany,
and I have been gifted for life.
25 April 2015
Rodin: The Thinker
(Inspired by fond memories of Rodin's Museum with dear ole dad-Jan 2014)
When I brought my Malaysian Chinese funny dad to see
The Thinker
Instead of awe and admiration
He asked me: Is the statue having constipation?
I really had to laugh out laugh at that one.
The Thinker did look like he was having some bowel issues.
Dad could be right.
For I do a lot of thinking myself
On the loo.
My father is an impatient traveller who loves his naps and daily fixes of habits set in years.
Coffee and a good seat.
And free toilets
That he doesn't need to pay 8 euros for!
So traipsing through cultural wonders for two weeks in France,
Isn't exactly his macaroon or cup of tea!
He had had it by the time we got to Rodin.
Our last day in France.
What I will fondly remember is seeing my parents in winter garb,
Walking through the gardens of Versailles,
Along the Seine.
On cobbled streets of St Paul de Vence,
Eating Chinese in Nice!
Mum taking photos and politely sightseeing, inhaling in the beauty
And fragrance of Grasse,
Dad catching naps on benches
Wherever he can.
Even in Cannes.
These memories will stay etched
Whenever I return to France,
Or fine art or high culture.
I will be humbled
By dad
And the constipated thinker
in Rodin's garden!
Paris je t’aime
there is a piece of me
always left somewhere
museum, square, metro, cafe,
seine side, left bank, marais,
but somewhere in the city of light
there is a visceral something
i cannot put my finger on it but
it has not returned to me.
since the first spring day
when she greeted me
with a smile wider than the
wide waist of the arch de trioumph
where cherry blossoms burst in riots of pink,
dotting cheeks in the cobalt spring skies
so i return, every so often
to claim it back
but to no avail.
alas, it may have got lost,
meandered off,
on the cobbled-stone streets or
in the labyrinthian galleries
of wondrous art so pure
to imitate it would be as futile
as reclaiming something
lost forever.
Marais: Place des Vosges
On the green square by
the grand archways
Where Victor Hugo used to reside
Lies the squarest green in all of Paris
Under the verdant leafy spring trees
I watch white shirted Parisian children play while their grand mamans watch
The world cloistered
Inside this square , life is unhurried and untouched
My daughter catches red ladybirds
With her bare hands
While her father reads a book and chugs down his beer.
The little children giggle and laugh under the pale summer sun
When the winter brings bare trees
The air is crisp and the bench is cold
While I relish in the wonder
Of this special quiet spot
My favourite place in all of Paris
Why do we travel the world
To find ourselves
In unexpected places?
Where there is no need for pretension.
Your soul hangs loose.
Unbidden.
November 2014
The Romance of Provence
They say there is always romance in Provence
with the southern sun
casting her seductive light
over hills and vales where ancient
perched villages conceal
their tales of yore
from the world at large
whilst you dance in the summer sun
on fragrant lavender hills
bursting in bloom
in their fullness- bewitching you
as you stumble in Arles
over some artists’ memory and form
in the languorous stupor of the fine wine you had at lunch,
at the medieval square.
These stunning once grand chateaux,
still with their billowy white curtains,
beckoning at you,
continue to promise you
that this seduction
is as tangible as the French accent
you try to attempt
but fail hopelessly, miserably at-
You cannot be French unless
your birth-right and tongue command it.
You remain
a visitor. With the floppy straw hat, white dress, leather strappy sandals
and sunscreen, high cheekbones and camera and striped tote,
still figuring out Proust
and the romance of Provence.
Beyond the window: Grasse
The mists roll up across the hills,
where a perched village-medieval, ancient and sometimes forgotten,
except for tourists looking for old ramparts
and cobblestones,
to walk on and to instagram about,
stay.
What lies beyond those doors,
Of stories too old and unbearable,
Of cold, windy nights, and joyous celebrations
Beyond unique, old, shut doors.
The winter rain rhythmically pelts down
Over the rolling lavender hills.
Fragonard could have painted these hills if they were his style,
Instead he lends his name
To the oldest perfumerie in the world
Near streets and hills where the scentless Grenouille roamed.
The window pane frames the
romance of the hinterland
Of the Côte d'Azur
Where old money has stood the test of time.
But where you must find your own way.
Here is where stillness commands,
Being rules,
And calm washes over you like
A Fragonard scent.
December 2013
On Blindness: An Ode to Milton
I wonder when Milton wrote about his blindness
If he ever worried about not
Being able to do powerpoint presentations anymore
Or those whizzy Prezi slides
Or read the fine-print of his students’ essays
In sometimes their unintelligible handwriting.
Of the words of yet another brand new author or endless lecture notes and lit crit.
Or whether he knew that retinal detachments
Can be 50-50 though more likely 85% these days
I so thank the good Swiss doctor in the 1920s
For inventing the surgery that has saved many eyes
But I’ll bet you Milton didn’t walk out of Chanel
On Avenue Montaigne weeping, salty hot tears
of uncontrollable sobs, in thankfulness, of his eye-sight saved
But I wonder too if he ever felt paranoid
about spots on his windscreen, or a buzzy mosquito near his eye
Thinking NEW FLOATERS have appeared
Or any little black dots can set off new alarm bells
Sending him on a mini-panic of something being wrong with his eyes(again),
Nor wake up in jolts sometimes, testing if he could see in the dark,
But I know for sure I am just
Thankful, grateful and humbled that
I can see my salty tears; I can see the redness on my pupil,
That I can SEE!
And even when that little boy
in the paediatric ophthalmological suite next to mine
who was bawling with his unseeing eyes,
which made me sad,
But I feel doubly humbled and crushed in my humility and smallness
That other problems- glaucoma, cataract, ptosis
Seem pale in comparison,
For I’ll NEVER ever take for granted again,
The beauty of a simmering sunset, or the radiance of my mother’s smile,
Or the majesty of the sky slowly opening at dawn
And the intricate motifs and patterns on a lovely sheer softness of a silky scarf,
Or that I can still thread a needle, or buckle my son’s sandals,
And see, watch, witness, capture, behold,
In the beauty of my children’s innocent love or watch them slowly grow
Or never forsake the simple pleasure of reading them a bed-time story
And mostly freeze and frame, with my own eyes, the generous and vivid love,
Glowing in my man’s kind and earnest face,
How can you take such beauty for granted?
So, I thank Science and a God who loves me
For saving me
from blindness.
September 2012 ( 2 months after my retinal detachment surgery at the American Hospital of Paris)
~RL poems
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