Opus

Paris

I've never been to Paris.

Paris to me, for a long time,
was red.
It was here that I fell in love
with a death scene, with
all the death scenes that preceded
and followed. And I would think of it for
years after, in late summer afternoons
caught somewhere between a dream
and a nightmare. I would wake up
in cold sweat, with the evening falling
on the other side of the darkening windows.

Paris, was where an Englishman I knew
fell for a Russian prostitute,
a surrealist love story
seen and interpreted very absurdly
by the Americans, born in India.
Our professor says that Paris
and Kolkata are quite similar, as in
they both became Paris and Kolkata
in the late half of the 18th century.
Kolkata was called Calcutta then, her
streets dark, her men muddled, her women
behind bars, and Paris was Pa-ree.
They are quite similar, as in they both
have truncated histories lining their roads,
enduring regrets in darker alleys
the air overwhelmed with a neurotic nostalgia
for the stench of piss and blood and midnight.
The people, are quite dead.
I wonder if all cities are the same, after all,
an imaginable state of being, hovering
forever between the present and the past.

Paris is where, years later, Jack
would sketch the portrait of his
one-armed landlady, to
make his beau jealous. Perhaps,
Paris then, would be black and white,
or blue, or any other colour. It wouldn't matter,
because I'd be dead by then, of course.
But history will still line her roads,
as it will line my own.
Perhaps. I hope. I abide too much by hope.
For all I know, the world would be over,
all histories done, hope deserted
slipping away into an infinite void.

Paris, is beyond.
Beyond the utopia that I
have longed to live,
the ones that lovers measure
on maps with mirrors-shards, how
close are we, to another World War?
Borders are imaginary, countries arbitrary,
or is it being collectively imagined, that
makes one real? What is Paris then?
A past given and forgiven, if only
because it will never happen again. All
cruelty excused for poetry's sake.

I will never be to Paris.
My Paris is my own, like my death scene.

Paris, to me, is a city of love and death.