Parigots

They all come here—tourists, students, workers— rushing on boulevards, through metro turnstiles, filling shops, museums, cafés, buses, bars— calf heads who think they’re the best of the best. Lutèce was a swamp, but now it’s paved over. Louis Napoléon declared himself the emperor and hired the egotistical bruiser Haussmann to level the medieval lanes for wide boulevards. They built the best sewers, the biggest parks, the largest opera house, uniform façades, world-class corruption, most egregious cost overruns, aqueducts, railroad stations, natural gas! Parigots have plenty of reasons to be proud. They were destroyed and they built again. They congest all the fashionable places. They know progress like picking their own scabs. Now there’s more space for drunkards, and it’s easier for rats to cross the streets. Dogs can find more dogs at night, and the army can more conveniently deploy. But how can a mother find her child? Where does a man find his fellow? At the bottom of which bottle is my soul? A poet cries out and nobody notices.