trou au centre de la terre
Hole in the Center of the Earth
Inside Notre Dame is a black hole
where worshippers find a secret passageway
to grace
After the fiery birth, sodden mementos:
A cross,
A crown of thorns
Sculpted stone and paintings
The smell of charred faith
They are singing hymns all around the crater
that leads to the very center
of the earth:
Christ’s tomb
Walls that roll away
Spires collapsing
Bees hunkered in their hives
Outside trees in bloom and birds in flight
Sun through a hole in the sky
where God might come down and tell
some people off:
Don’t blame the Jews,
the Muslims,
the gays
or the Yellow Vests
Accidents happen
Fires start
Spontaneous combustion
Carelessly tossed cigarettes
Cars gone feral
What’s important is to keep
the fires of revolution stoked
Light through darkness
You and I are not voyeurs
of history
Every one of us is either a collaborator
or a resister
We don’t even know the choices we make
are not ours to choose
The history we leave in our wake
the next generation’s refuse
Black Hole
Like what prepubescent boys imagine
lies at the juncture
of a woman’s legs
dark void that can swallow a man
whole
burning with hellfire
at its rim
if you go there, you must be prepared
to withstand nuclear heat
and to risk annihilation
your own heart plundered
your own soul
devoured
if you make it past the hole’s
fiery rim you will know
exquisite pleasure
in dying that
momentous but not
one-time-only
death
you will have visited eternity
and returned to tell
the tale to embellish
to boast
or if you are the man your mother
dreamed of while conceiving you
on her bed of white stars
you will fall into the black holes
of the eyes of your lovers,
flared with iridescent irises
that match your own,
deep enough to take you
to the outer reaches
of the universe
time and time again
French Lessons
Sing the words, she says,
Round your lips and tilt back your head,
So I try to sound like her, and lilt
the phrases, la musique Francais
But when I try to conjure Edith Piaf
my mouth gets stuck around the vowels
and my syllables trip over themselves
Non! Says the teacher–tu parles comme un russe,
un réfugié
from a very bad movie
Forget it, I say
Oublie
I don’t need to know how to order le poisson
or even les boisson
I need to find the Yellow Vests.
Comment dit-on Yellow Vest en Francais?
How to be young again à Paris
Forget the happy faces in the text,
with balloons of song in perfect French
coming out of their perfect French mouths
I have to find my way back to la révolution
I have to find a passion
I can really get mon cœur
around