TH E BE ACH
A poem by Ann Manov
It was Paris, mid-August. The French had caravanned
To the rocky Midi. Boulangerie Saison was papered up;
The fruit stands, too, where galaxies of flies
Shot around mirabelles. We foreigners were left,
Paying out-of-town landlords a thousand euros rent and conjugating
Our inquires about Chavez’s view on cocaine
And the sultan’s on the Pill. On Wednesdays I’d go to market,
Swinging a bag around my index finger in the discount periphery
Of five-for-five panties and Téléphonez au Maghreb load-as-you-go’s.
The fruit were syrupy, crushed pulp, the sky bullet silver
On the threshold of storm. I trod as if through heavy waves,
Perched in kitten heels, flushed in moth-wrecked wool that reeked of me.
Every limestone church smelled of piss.
Arabs in windbreakers snaked past knockoff TV shops.
I walked through traffic, that summer, and faked directions when stopped.
Then the vision came, with the smell of turpentine
By a half-painted housing project:
An empty beach stacked with sandbags,
The fuchsia pin-cushion of a sea-urchin,
My silent parents before standing water—
There was none of Yeats’ O sea-starved, hungry sea.
The memory set like aspic on the limp, dusk hour home,
As a tourist’s toddler tugged her along the trash-specked Seine:
A family trip to the shore, before the fear set in.