Taking coffee 'with' Jean-Paul Sartre.
It was 1952. We had a limited travel currency.
In Paris, I went one morning to
the Dome Café. There
sat Jean-Paul Sartre, smoking
a large meerschaum pipe
such as Kierkegaard or Nietzsche might have smoked;
he had his morning coffee in front of him.
Simone had not yet joined him.
A circle of young admirers sat at a
discreet distance; most wore black
but the young women could not avoid
a certain Parisian chic in their sombreness,
their existential frown and turned-down lips
around bright eyes.
It was the chance of what we call
a lifetime. Dare I speak to him?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained:
a human being must live his words,
act out his own chosen life in honesty
like Ché Guevara..
I moved to his table. The circle of admirers
were all attention. I saw two of them
surreptitiously take out small notebooks.
‘Is this seat free, Monsieur? ’ He knew me for
a stranger in that theatre of the absurd
we call life, where all are strangers.
His arm was a signifier. His hand
indicated an empty seat (not the closest,
which awaited Simone) : his shoulder
gave the slightest Gallic shrug. We make
our own decisions, live by them.
An awed waiter, affecting nonchalance,
brought my coffee. Should I speak to Sartre
of teenage mountaineering in Canada
and the discovery of philosophy?
No. We would then be
to each other, The Other.
We sat there silent: two beings without meaning
whose meeting was prefigured, whom
only a Creator could have put there;
a Creator whom we must deny.
[...] Read more
poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
