For Marijke
La rue luisante où tout se mire ;
Le bus multicolore, le cab noir, la girl en rose
Et même un peu de soleil couchant on dirait . . .
—Valéry Larbaud, “Londres”
On awaking in the early hours
a fortnight before Christmas—
it was, I think, around Saint Lucy's Day,
in the eighty-fifth year of my life,
I found that all my friends had died
(the handful who had not were
playing dead—or had gone away).
I puzzled, lying there, half asleep:
Were we living still in Marylebone,
in the flat on Upper Montague Street?
If so, I'd better hurry and suit up
to catch my Metropolitan Line
train; she'd go to work at Bumpus—
later, it was Oliver & Boyd—
and everything would be just the same.
But like the rest, she's dead now—
long buried in a grave in Messenias
with a distant view of the Taygetos
(thus Jacinthe emailed me, I never saw the place).
I lie in bed here in my Piedmont house,
with views of the Blue Ridge and Jefferson's Monticello.
So what's empirical? You tell me!
We broke up amiably enough ages ago
(she raged at me when we last met,
but I'd foolishly said she smoked
too much, something smokers hate to hear—and it killed her).
They seemed so real, though,
the motley buses, black cabs, girl en rose.
December 16, 2024