THE PARKS OF LONDON, GARDENS OF PARIS, AND US – a poetry suite by Louis Daniel Brodsky

Learn more about the late poet/humorist/satirist/Faulkner scholar here.

The Parks of London, Gardens of Paris, and Us

 
I: Mattering

With us lovers,
it’s not a matter of time,
rather a matter of us,
with time to make time matter.

II: Next New Address

Once again, you and I,
Sweet Linda,
On a Saturday night,
Seek deeply needed sleep,
Side by side,
From our shared adventures;
Only, this time,
The rest we quest is airborne,
As we fly west to east,
Sunday-bound,
Eight and a half hours,
Forty-two hundred miles,
To our next new address —
The Stafford Hotel,
St. James’s Place,
Westminster,
London, England,
We Two.

III: Love-Expressions

Not one sound night’s sleep into our visit to England,
And the London Times Monday edition
Is running terrifying headlines, bylines, and sidebars
Decrying the opportunistic vandalism and arson
Unleashed by thousands of lower- and middle-class youths,
Fired up to full-scale anarchy, in Tottenham, Notting Hill, Acton,
Uncomfortably near our Mayfair and Westminster.

We tell ourselves, in the serene purlieus close by Green Park,
Buckingham Palace, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey,
That these metastasizing scourges of mindless depravity,
Of the same intensity as rampages of Dark Ages hordes,
Won’t reach us, nestled in the womb of England’s affluence.
But here in bed, though our intimacy insulates us from reality,
We almost can’t help wondering . . . almost.

For the next few days,
Using the same social networking the rioters rely on,
Our children, siblings, friends, work circles,
Send hurriedly texted words of fearful concern,
Inquiring as to our safety, praying for our lives —
Love-expressions which only heighten the passion
Of our tender, protective caring for each other.

 
IV: Sense of Ease

Whether relaxing, al fresco,
With a chicken sandwich or a bagel and cream cheese,
At the Fiori Corner restaurant, in Leicester Square,
Dining, by night, at Cecconi’s or Babbo, in Mayfair,
Navigating Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden,
Or communing with Green Park’s shadows,
We’re achieving a complete sense of ease, with London.
And even though we’ve only known each other’s smiles
A mere year and a half of sheer discovery,
It seems wherever destiny leads our lithe feet, eager eyes,
We’re already familiar with the destination.

V: England

Heading northwest, from cloud-mottled London,
Whose riots, though not touching us,
Are assaulting the world’s headlines,
We arrive at Warwick Castle, with our guide,
Enter the ruins of another tumultuous time,
And listen in on history’s cries,
Conscious that we’re treading on epochal soil.

Then we drive to Stratford-upon-Avon,
Stop at the Hathaway farm cottage, in Shottery,
Eavesdrop on Will Shakespeare courting Anne.
Standing in Holy Trinity Church’s chancel,
Clasping hands, we hear the playwright,
At the Reformation’s gory denouement,
Scratching, with quill pen, his stone’s epitaph,

Warning today’s youthful looting hooligans:
“Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare . . .
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.”
Back in our Stafford Hotel suite, after dinner,
We enter the serenity of our peace-seeking eyes,
Trusting that our love will change the future.

VI: Naming Spaces

Everyone should save a sacred, wondrous space, in his heart,
For a river, a castle, a storied town, a circular convergence of streets,
A park, a palace, and a soulmate to adore, immortalize —

The Avon, flowing past Warwick Castle and Shakespeare’s Stratford;
Piccadilly Circus; St. James’s Park;
Buckingham Palace, for the Changing of the Guard;

And a love like you, Linda — just as I’m doing, in my ageless heart,
As we trace the intricacies of London and the Cotswolds.
I’m calling my space Jubilation. What are you going to name yours?


VII: This Fabled Milieu

Each of our five peripatetic days together, here in London,
As we’ve strolled between Green Park,
St. James’s Place, and all the rest of the City of Westminster,

Have seemed to run backwards, like a sea of daydreams,
Into a timelessness yet to be transfigured
From the history of who we’ve just begun to become, here.

If we’re fortunate enough to assimilate into this fabled milieu,
We might discover our passionately entwined identities
Aligned with the myths of Lancelot and Guinevere

Or, if not, conjoined, in sweet, poetic harmony,
With Anne Hathaway and her theatrical bard, Will Shakespeare,
Perhaps Victoria and her abiding admirer, Prince Albert.

Whatever destiny is ours to assume, for now and tomorrow,
Will be ours, all ours, just ours, forever,
Whenever we relive our romantic epic of England.

VIII: Insatiable

Every day, this second week of August,
From our rainy-Sunday-afternoon arrival,
At unexpectedly unharried Heathrow,
To our sunny-Saturday departure, by Eurostar,
From crowded St. Pancras Station
(The two of us now bound for Paris,
Speeding, smoothly, beneath the English Channel),
We’ve walked, in hand-held wonder-step,
Over London’s Victorian-faceted streets,
Elated to be insatiable travelers insatiably in love,
Being what each moment’s energy makes of us.

Tout de suite, Gare du Nord arrives at track’s end,
And we’re weaving through narrow streets,
Then past vast mansard-roofed buildings
Lining spacious boulevards busy with summer,
As we edge closer, closer, to the First Arrondissement,
Place Vendôme, Rue de Castiglione,
Where it intersects Rue de Rivoli.
Stepping out of the taxi, at our hotel,
Staring straight into the leafy Tuileries,
We’re elated, for the second time in a week,
To be insatiable travelers insatiably in love.

IX: First Evening in Paris

Now, the City of Light’s twilight/dusk/night enfolds our hotel,
Just across the street from the myriad-peopled Tuileries,
In whose gravel-pathed, chestnut-tree expanses we stroll peacefully.

Within a kaleidoscopic focusing of astonished eye blinks,
We enter the enormous, obelisk-adorned Place de la Concorde,
Then linger atop its bridge, breathing in, deeply, the serene Seine,

Before walking along Rue Royale, past Maxim’s, to the Madeleine,
But not without pausing, embracing, gazing at the Eiffel Tower,
Whose sweeping beacon and gold-glowing reaches transfix us.

Soon, ten o’clock dinner flows, seductively, into Sunday a.m.,
Sleep’s tranquil waters buoying our weary bodies.
Tingling, we lie in silence fantasy-sequined with Parisian dreams.

 
X: Le déjeuner

Just you and I, mon cherie,
Sitting in the refreshing shade
Dripping from green-russet chestnut trees
Deep in the Tuileries,
You eating mozzarella cheese, tomatoes,
I savoring poulet-and-dried-tomato salad,
Both of us dipping baguette slices
In a dish of olive oil,
All under a gray-mottled cerulean sky,
And best of all,
Absolutely better than best of all,
Is that this festival of simple cuisine,
This glorious déjeuner,
In this heart of the jardin-soul of Parisian life,
Is happening spontaneously,
On a once-upon-a-Sunday ever-afternoon.

XI: Happening

Just one day into Paris,
We can no longer say
That we’re going to have a great time,
Because it’s already happening;
Indeed, it’s been happening
Since before we stepped off the train;
It started even before London,
Months ago,
Back in the States,
Whenever we’d let our fantasies
Get the better of our fancies.

Here in the Tuileries, right this now,
Kissing between bites
Of our green-red-and-white salads,
Thinking how those happenings
Have begun to happen,
We realize how “happening”
Is its own perpetual present,
A time-sea
Flowing backward, future-ward,
Simultaneously,
Happening, happening, happening.

XII: Impressions in Musée de l’Orangerie

I

 Monet’s water lilies —
Similar to Jackson Pollock’s large abstract canvases —
Complete liberation of learned disciplines,
In favor of sheer, unadulterated spontaneity
Of colors and sensations —
An explosion of feelings —
Monet and Pollock
Freeing up, letting go of, emotions,
In an unbridled totality of organic sensuousness —

II

What undiluted vitality, joy, exuberance, ecstasy
Monet must have experienced,
When, at Giverny,
Through the blurred vision
Of his blended-with-nature eyes,
He painted these exquisitely sensual renderings
Of water lilies, weeping willows — the pond.

III

You and I could return to the curving murals
In these cavernous paired oval rooms,
At l’Orangerie, in the Tuileries,
Every morning, noon, dusk, and midnight
Of our sentient, sensual lives,
To become one with the light, the dark
Drifting, sifting down,
Through the canvas-filtered glass ceiling,
One with the throbbing brush strokes
Of pulsating color,
One with the Mind behind the mind
Behind the immortal soul
Of Monet’s water lilies,
One.
              

XIII: L’Orangerie

This shadow-strewn, cool-breezy Jardin des Tuileries–perfumed noon,
“Linda” is the name love drapes over its naked shoulders,
Like a diaphanous, loose-flowing robe of Claude Monet water lilies.

The cumulus-river powder-blue sky cries out your two soft syllables,
As if it were an entire choir of silent wind chimes
Rhyming the smooth, soothing hues of Giverny’s padded, petaled pool.

Too soon, you and I, sweet nénuphar, are woven into the hallowed soul
Of l’Orangerie’s broad, bold, blurry brush strokes —
Violet, green, white, pink, yellow, blue heartbeats painting us as lovers.

XIV: Le bateau parisien

At the foot of la Tour Eiffel’s tourist-queued Pilier Nord
Lies Port de la Bourdonnais, by Pont d’Iéna, on the river Seine,
Where the sleek, glass-sided-and-roofed Onyx awaits our embarkation,

Then slips, almost without our noticing, from its mooring, precisely at 8:30,
Glides us, fluidly, silently, upstream, in the remaining daylight,
Past les Invalides, le Musée d’Orsay, and la Cathédrale Notre Dame,

And, at la Bibliothèque Nationale, in illuminated darkness, reverses course,
Flows by l’Hôtel de Ville, le Louvre, le Place de la Concorde, le Grand Palais,
And, just beneath the massive tower, completes its Sunday dinner voyage.

Now, midnight dances around the stars, asks us to hold hands, kiss.
Gazing up, marveling not at August’s waxing moon
But at the lacy, cast-iron tracery of the grandest obelisk man’s ever shaped,

We gather every entrancing impression that saw us, from the water,
Those glittering, shimmering, dazzling, dizzying reflections of the city,
Its exquisitely graceful bridges, spotlit edifices, timeless je ne sais quoi,

Blessed to have been steeped in the sublime mystique soul mates know
Maybe once or twice in their lives or, like us, moment to moment,
When romance transcends itself, becomes love.

XV: Asleep in the Tuileries

You and I, my precious love,
Have walked and walked and walked,
Slowed into such a sweet peak of Parisian exhaustion,
For traversing Rue de Rivoli, from Castiglione,
All the way to Boulevard de Sébastopol,
Finally reaching the ultramodern Pompidou Centre,
And, before and after the museum visit,
Exploring four exquisite churches:
St-Germain-l’Auxerrois, St-Eustache, St-Merri, Notre Dame.

Fluent in the tongue the Tuileries’ shadows speak,
We now spend three clear-cool-blue and sky-serene hours
Recuperating from our adventures’ splendid fatigue,
Stroking one another’s arms, dozing, in green lounge chairs,
At peace, in the tranquillity of this retreat,
The barely shivering chestnut-tree leaves lullabying us.
In this garden, the cosmos is ours to borrow,
And romance is what keeps our closed eyes open,
Looking into each other’s dreams.

XVI: Affirmations

Two fascination-faceted days have elapsed
Since last you and I stood, in elated, exhilarated amazement,
Beneath the lacework of this Eiffel-ed space between earth and vault,
Which visitors come to praise, in every language of awe,
Celebrating the sheer audacity of the human imagination to create.

Now, this beautifully blue land- and skyscaped Tuesday noon,
You and I, life-love, in the love-rush we feel gripping us,
Enter a dedicated elevator in the south pillar
And climb 123 meters, to le Jules Verne Restaurant,
Where we’ll dine, with a nonpareil view of Paris’s glowing mosaic.

Our hands, craving each other’s affectionate beckoning,
Reach out, across the crisp-linen-covered table,
Squeeze, fingers to fingers, in gentle, passionate embrace.
“L.D., you plan everything so perfectly, make me feel so beautiful.”
“I love that you can tell me this.

“I’m so glad I make you feel this happy,
And I can do it because you fill in my missing parts, complete me.”
“You’re my other half, too; I belong to you, completely.”
Though we descend, eventually, into a present we left waiting below,
We know our affirmations linger in those rarefied heights.

XVII: Le Moulin Rouge

Both of us bring distinct predilections
To this Tuesday evening’s “Soirée Dîner — Spectacle,”
High atop Montmartre, on Boulevard de Clichy,
At the Belle Epoch cabaret, fabled by Toulouse-Lautrec’s danseurs
(Yvette Guilbert, La Goulue, May Milton, Mlle. Eglantine, Jane Avril),

That yet retains the famous name Le Moulin Rouge,
Which has been integral to your imagination’s working vocabulary
Since your earliest years of lessons, in your mother’s studio,
To your perfecting classical ballet techniques, at Carnegie Hall,
Which you translated into a career as a dance-academy owner.

I, a collector of Art Nouveau posters depicting seductive women —
Lithographs by French, Belgian, and Czech artists —
Have spent many nights, in my high-rise apartment,
Dreaming, fantasizing about Parisian nightlife in the bohemian 1890s,
Seeing Henri himself, sitting at a stage-side table, sketching, painting.

When dinner for the full house of 850 patrons is finished,
The lights dim; the room goes silent; the invisible band awakens;
The purple- and red-velvet curtains lift like castle portcullises,
And a troupe of half a hundred men, dressed in silver suits,

Sixty Doriss Girls, clad in rhinestones, sequins, feathers, materializes.
And for a 120 years packed into an hour and a half of Féerie,
We witness a dazzling revue of variations on the cancan,
Flamboyantly staged and labanotated walking dances,
And strategically timed sideshows, including a near-nude lady
Diving into an aquarium swarming with snakes, romancing them.

By 10:30, a taxi is winding us down, down, down choked streets
Leading back to our fifth-floor hotel suite,
Where, in a swoon of arousal, we prepare for our own cabaret revue,
Featuring a spectacle of ecstasy only we lovers perform, nightly,
The music we score, the dance we choreograph, fantastique.

XVIII: Touching Words

“Words and touching
Are the most important gifts we can share.”

“I love feeling the feelings we feel
And saying the things we say,
Shaping the perfect words around our emotions,
So that, together, ever together,
We reaffirm our love for each other.”

“I love telling you how much I love touching you.”

XIX: Giverny

        For Linda,
              who flowers
                   in every season of my heart

I

Two warm mid-August days ago, a glorious Tuesday afternoon,
We strolled though the Tuileries,
Ate lunch, beneath robust chestnut trees, people-spectating,

Then wended our gravelly-path way toward Place de la Concorde,
Stopping at l’Orangerie, to purchase tickets
For an experience even our capacious daydreams couldn’t have painted:

Two monumental ground-floor oval rooms,
Both containing four myriad-paneled Monet murals,
Whose profusely intertwining water lilies and weeping willows

Followed us around and around, grabbed hold of our beings,
Enfolded our emotions, in their soft-smooth reds, greens, blues, pinks,
Embraced us, with their soothingly hued yellows and whites,

Until we surrendered our senses, sensibilities, spirits, our souls,
To the magical abstraction of the whole creation,
Then blended into the impressionistic essence of our shared serenity.

II

Now, driving through the countryside, forty miles outside Paris,
We arrive at the Normandy village of Giverny
And are invited into the quietude of Claude Monet’s private domain,

Allowed, with his unspoken, unwritten, unstroked permission,
To witness the glistening dew lift, invisibly,
From the drooping willows’ slender leaves, the floating lilies’ petals,

Step into his rustic house, for a worshipful visit,
Admire his hanging Utamaro, Hiroshige, and Hokusai woodblock prints,
Assimilate the space that provided succor, sanctuary for his genius.

For three hours, we roam the secluded purlieus,
Capturing its tranquillity, in the unthreatening nets of our gazes,
Wandering amidst the jardins‘ lush abundance,

Returning, finally, to where we first immersed ourselves in the estate:
Amidst the bamboo and willow trees, the two Japanese bridges —
The pool, teeming with nénuphars we hear breathing, whispering to us.

XX: The Best Life

“This life I’m living is the best life I’ve ever lived.”
You whisper this, visibly, into my spirit’s ear.
I sigh, “You’re the reason for my being.”
You hear me, and I hear you,
As we breathe existence into each other.

Suspended in ecstasy’s coalescence,
Our bodies heave like Hokusai’s great wave,
Until our breathing diminishes to whispers
Echoing, below and above love’s ocean,
“This life we’re living is the best life we’ve ever lived.”

XXI: Les jardins

After walking the world of the Jardin du Luxembourg,
Then traipsing Boulevard Raspail to its confluence with St-Germain,
North, across the Seine, on Pont Royale,
And meandering over rues de Rivoli and de la Paix, to l’Opera,
We’re relaxing in the Jardin des Tuileries, this soft Friday afternoon.

On various serendipitous occasions, these past six days,
We’ve gravitated to this garden we regard as our backyard,
To catch up with our souls, by slowing them down,
Having lunch or eating ice cream, yawning, napping, daydreaming,
Telling each other how deeply we love being here, anywhere, together.

Acknowledging that this is our last day in Paris,
We kiss each other’s fingertips, lips, almost desperately.
Finally getting up from our green chairs, gathering our resolve,
We vow, for what’s left of the flowering fragrance of these last hours,
To follow our desires to the next Tuileries, wherever it may be.