Harking Back

On certain Sundays at the hotel in Odéon, 1965,
around the time that Winston Churchill died,
you would kick me out of that big hard bed
to make coffee in bowls, to sip between
bleary sighs and grumbles about the lack of this,
the loss of that, the temperature of the room.

The window stood grey through February.
Ice along the ledge.
Just an ordinary winter window in the long days,
but at night a crutch to dream upon
while picking out the windows of other
exiles anonymous forging future nostalgias
in freezing green garrets just like mine.
There I would sit, snowbound, youthbound,
numb in mind and body, adrift in my world
of quaint tomorrows, longing in secret
for the comforts of friends’ homes:
eggs and bacon, central heating, unstained sheets.

And when my imaginary lover
shifted in her sleep, I took my place beneath
the 8-watt bulb, stub of martyr’s pencil poised,
thinking that in the afternoon I might loiter outside
Shakespeare and Company in the Rue de la Bûcherie
running through my Young Hemingway impressions,
and later lounge behind the broad plate glass
of the Dôme or the Rotonde, feeling just a bit
like Jimmy Joyce. But soon I’d get caught up
in my labours and forget about you, the window,
the dead, and the wealthy Parisienne
from a week ago who sniffed at me suspiciously
and said: ‘You’re the first real writer I’ve met.’