A Canadian in Paris
Saturday, 30 June 2007 | 17:11
Looking for Sartre
and Simone de Beauvoir
at the Café Deux Maggots
looking for Voltaire
in bookstalls along the Seine
looking for Van Gogh
to say I loved him
finding only fleas
racing round my midsection
stomach upset from the water
turning over and over
every half hour
drinking only wine
Rounding a corner suddenly
to confront Audrey Hepburn
(which is nice confronting)
and her new husband Mel Ferrer
I had read in English papers
they were on their honeymoon
and had a kind of glow
that marks some newlyweds
it was like finding a story
on the Paris sidewalk
At the Louvre
moving from painting to painting
I began to lose the sense of reality
from these larger-than-life
people and places
expecting to see Pierre Bonnard
sneaking in to retouch his paintings
when the guard wasn’t looking
and me acting suspiciously
Before you speak to someone
they look at you knowingly
betrayed without a word
into being a foreigner
and thought American
- at least half of Paris
sitting somewhere
in front of street cafés
old men playing chess
other old men
searching for cigarette butts
old men wise as encyclopedias
old women who once knew Casanova
I want so much to be in love here
but no one to be in love with
and finding an emotion
shimmering like a pearl
lost near the Arc de Triomphe
by a despairing lover
it’s copyright and belongs
to someone else
I left it there
in the gutter shimmering
A room near the Metro
with the noise of trains
a vibration in your bones
of such intensity
it sucks you out of bed
dreaming of Marie Antoinette
and Eleanor of Aquitaine
in a castle the size of Alberta
joining the other scared passengers
clutching their transfers
and wake up sleepwalking
Before leaving Canada
I’d stayed with Irving Layton
a man so positive of himself
he’d exposed all my negatives
and in this most glamorous city
in the world I wandered
around not knowing who I was
tramping the Rue Pigalle
and Montmartre
at the Tuilleries and Odéon
making notes for poems
pretending to be a writer
then returning to London
back to Canada
- and after a long time
finally beginning to understand
the man in my head was me
Al Purdy, To Paris Never Again
“Before you speak to someone
they look at you knowingly
betrayed without a word
into being a foreigner….”
How true. And have you found out why?
That’s just one of several stanzas that jump out at me. I quite like this poem, because it actually speaks to me on several levels; I can identify with so many lines… Al Purdy was a Canadian writer, known as a “working class poet”. (In several ways, he reminds me of the poetry of the Beat Generation, actually.) His phrasing does not tend to be sweeping, grand, lyrical; rather, he used plain language to evoke the Canadian collective unconscious (which may be why so much of his work just “feels” Canadian). His writing typically explores darker but common themes such as loneliness, nostalgia, regret, but the overall mood tends to be lightened by clever turns of phrase and subtle humour.
As for the answer to your question, I’m not sure! Perhaps because I forgot to remove from my forehead the large sign that said “TOURIST” in flashing lights.
A wild guess : either you guys look so clean and primp, you stant out a mile or so disheavelled beatnik, the result is the same.
I couln’t tell for ladies but guys definitely have a different haircut.The same goes for the Britts, the Germans and generally all non French. I love to try and guess then verify if I guessesd right. remember the “cravates” in Cannes