The Evolution Of April
Whenever my twin palm trees sway,
rustling towards warmer waters,
I think of you in Los Angeles,
and then of Paris in Spring, our April,
that month sweetest and most cruel,
and on my list down, down,
near the Louvre i'd written: Love;
that romantic cliché, Paris for Eros.
I was living in the 4 th, the arrondissement
across from the Ile Saint Louis,
within sight of Notre Dame,
that's the point where the Seine god
parts his legs expansively, stretching
for a moment, before he merges for the sea.
You called me, you were lost, and so I ran
down and around my creaking stairs,
and then you were there, my Azriel,
my Thanatos, a perfect shadow standing
at Metro St Paul, waiting in the sunshine,
and always, and in my haste to meet you,
I'd knocked my watch against the threshold,
my Breguet ‘Réveil du Tzar, '
a small blued-steel Awakening of Caesar,
stopping time for just one afternoon,
and those two tiny twin hands unnoticed
as second and week-day pointers,
were released from their routine,
and danced each other across that silver face of time,
magnetic to the other, and affixed their darting bodies
to the pomme-hole of the minute hand's angel tip
and now months later they ride it still around,
ticking: All are equal! Tocking: Be special!
If only we, like them, were still in special orbit.
Ah, well, anyway. Later after awkward coffee
falling at the Caféohèque into desire,
kissing politely goodbye,
then French-kissing hello to Spring desire,
that brain-licking hell-hungry lion,
for me there was no hiding in ordinary days,
the new idea of you made my long-grasses shiver,
and the sprawl of you appeared in others faces.
Shehzaad, your name's bright syllables,
named now a new discovered element of boy,
and a new world brave, uninvited, real and permanent,
you are always spring to me, and someday, sometime,
some way we will be again like those blue angel hands
a skipping kiss across the silver face of time,
but for now, those twin palms are clear in total blue
and so rustle on obscure, and never two without you.
poem by Guy Peppin
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