The ashes

“Say it’s true. Please say you can hear
As I speak to you, all my words?” –
 
That’s the verse, sublime and austere,
That I sang from Paris hilltops…
 
I entrusted the wind with the secret
Of my artless yet only love –
 
But the wind rushed away and it seemed that
It then let my words drop from above:
 
It had scattered them over Montmartre
As a chain of nocturnal lights –
 
Down the verdured mount of martyrs
It winged down its reckless flight.
 
I had wandered along the pavement –
Blindly counting steps at night…
 
Much as this was bitter or painful,
I’d burnt up the verses of mine:
 
Just as witches of the Dark Ages
Were aflame à la Place de Grève,
 
Thus my woeful lines and quatrains
Writhed with pain, turning ashen grey.
 
And I wrote from scratch, over and over
Threading artfully every word…
 
I’d put the wild rosemary potion
In a niche onto my headboard.
 
But the higher forces somehow
Kept me out of the harm’s way:
 
Drop by drop, from the cracked phial
Deadly poison had leaked away...
 
…All the way to you. In the Louvre,
Amid corslets, lances and swords
 
I could feel your aura, your pneuma.
In the Hall of Arms, stone floors
 
Were as though covered with silver –
bluish ashes I took in hands,
 
Sprinkling over my head, reliving
A journey down memory lane:
 
“Say you hear, you are aware
That I speak to you, that I call?”
 
…I’m exiled from beloved Paris
Under ashen-blue armed escort.