​

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

Sailing Through Paris

 

Paris, my mirror, my memoir--City of Light, of image, of reflection

Imagine-nation,  Illumine-nation boasting wide boulevards of art, history

and romance  where  writers shopping for images—stunning dreamscapes,

fantasias, voyeurs in gilded cages wrought of iron and vintage tears—

lose themselves through your eyes   Our own slowly turning in your  seasons,

your cycles, your echoes, your impressions, our obsessions—creme brulee

and caramel, enchanting children’s carousels, Clair de Lune, Jules et Jim,

Sundays in the Park with George Seurat and Whitman

 

Here, in my modest tree-house, from the uppermost limb of my thinning

library of remembrance, my thoughts, as faded leaves, sail through a feathered sky

of energy and matter, a whole Cosmos of dream essence and awareness  How often

I have launched balloons from Van Gogh’s rooftop under the swirling multitude

of stars—my creative helium bursting with bright color—words flowering into

Spring, their music flowing into the Seine and Gershwin’s pulsing trafic

 

On other pages---broken tunes on the metro, the steps of Montmartre,

jazz on the half-shell, the fresh smell of ancient debris, the uncaged breath of lovers

in the disheveled dark, Isle Saint Louis in the rain becoming a floating water-lily

painted by Monet in golden mauve-tinged reverence, rusting bridges crossing

themselves at sunset, invisible angels lining the quai wearing lamplights for halos—

all wander like gypsies along the riverbanks of my brain where I, fading, pass

while they remain

 

Oh, Paris, ,you towering Eyeful! You starving artist in black Chanel tights,

amnesiac of  La Vie en Rose Paradise—our unfinished, half-naked poems

staggering off your screens en plein air down your decadent alleyways

in violet smoke and shadow could never leave you  We, whose minds have toppled

from our balconies of anticipation, whose dreams have drowned in their blue wounds,

whose Living Poems have plucked from our every bending branch each splintered

minute of experience, whose umbrellas of childhood—forever open—must return...

again and again

 

Paris, my river, my Seine, insane revolution of evolution, eau d’illusion,

bittersweet nostalgia--your dust of memory, your music-box melody Gymnopedie,.

Erik Satie, ne me quitte pas   Residence (permanent) of Oscar Wilde, of Piaf,

Morrison, Sartre, my heart and her chamber choir...of broken records, my heart

and her chamber orchestra---my nose pressed to your shattered glass--Paris,

                                                                                                                my mirror