Sous Les Étoiles
This city is a moonlit stave:
every balcony, terrace, and
belvedere reflects lamppost
light. The sapphire midnight
makes sheers and bedsheets
sway. Stars, the shade
of champagne, flicker in
the ballet of the dying sky,
like fireflies. Silent pavements
become sapient reservoirs
of skeletons…every death
is a Nocturne: Nabokov, Calvin,
Klee, Borges, Hesse, Nestlé,
Erasmus, Joyce, Chanel…
the soundless streets are dark
sonnets hidden in the smoke
of cigarettes after the cinema -
those stars and these streets
play softer melodies than violins:
they alleviate despair and astonish
the hearts that listen to every
minim and semibreve of the city.
