Paul Pines

Voyage

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This book was written during one of several trips to Paris, including a six month residence on the rue de Bievre, in the shadow of Notre Dame, where Pines and his wife lived in an apartment owned by the French production company, Initiale, which had optioned the film rights to his novel, The Tin Angel, and commissioned him to write the screen play. The movie was never made, but Pines returned several times thereafter to stay with friends. The book is an exploration of the paradox of time and eternity as experienced in a city haunted by the Celts, Roman legions, gothic artisans, secret societies of Magii and Alchemists working to distill the living essence in what was thought of as the marriage of opposites, in search of which the poet finds himself.


IF I COULD DO ANYTHING I WANTED TODAY

  • I would violate the privacy
  •    of lovers
  •              in the Jardin des Luxembourg
  •           on an overcast afternoon
  •                      as wind
  •                   invisible
  •              except in its effect
  •                bends everything
  •                  north
  •            I who write poems
  •           and remember none
  •             walk around the tidal basin
  •                 watching kids
  •              sail boats
  •                        then enter
  •                  a wooded glade
  •            light falls like pin-spots
  •                on what I think
  •                     at first
  •                       a lesbian embrace
  •               until her honey colored hair
  •                   whips back and she
  •                       sits astride
  •                         him
  •                     her hand
  •                       on his cheek
  •                I would violate them
  •                     both
  •                         if I could
  •                  not with the camera I hold up
  •             indelicately
  •                 and click
  •                but
  •                      as the wind
  •                             might
  •                            invisible
  •                         except in its
  •                      effect
  •                            bend them
  •                        like blossoms
  •                          to seed
  •                           my
  •                          breath
  •                      then
  •                           blow down
  •                         on the old men
  •                          playing chess
  •                             in front of
  •                               the Palais
  •