Marilyn Kallet has published 17 books, including The Love That Moves Me, poetry from Black Widow Press. She has translated Paul Eluard’s Last Love Poems, Péret’s The Big Game, and co-edited and co-translated Chantal Bizzini’s Disenchanted City (with J. Bradford Anderson and Darren Jackson.) Dr. Kallet is Nancy Moore Goslee Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Each spring she leads poetry workshops for VCCA-France in Auvillar. She has performed her poems on campuses and in theaters across the United States as well as in France and Poland, as a guest of the U.S. Embassy’s “America Presents” program; recently she performed with Ivy Writers Paris bilingual poets series, and with Plume at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris.
Paris Elegy
On Rue Bichat
on the shattered street
you want a poem
for Friday.
I have only
words
that hang heavy
in the air
like church bells.
129.
129.
129.
Notre Dame
stays locked
until Thursday.
A precaution,
you understand.
Words?
I have Sunday
blue sky above
the Seine,
police boats
and foot patrols,
grumpy tourists
who “came all this way”
and can’t enter
la Chapelle.
I have one family
at home
in Tennessee,
another here,
in Paris,
smaller now,
reduced to long echoes,
130
low sounds.
Ode to a Lost Poet
You abandoned me
during the worst violence
Paris has known
since World War II.
You are no
friend,
no human.
True, humans
do this.
And worse.
Worse.
You are no longer
a poet.
Poets must have heart.
True, some
manage words
without love
or courage.
The moment you
were not center
stage, you backed
out.
No word.
I sat alone in
Hotel Quartier Latin
watching the loop
of butchery on TV.
You created
a black hood of
silence for yourself.
“You can read
if you want to,” you emailed, at last.
“But my poetry must wait
for a more tranquil time.”
I was strapped into the plane
at LaGuardia on
9/11, waiting
to take off.
Sorry, the pilot said.
Now I’m here,
in our beloved Paris.
Writers and friends do not wait.
Delaville Café
stays well-lit, open for poetry, camaraderie.
The amps have been plugged in.
The audience wants words: comfort, rage,
anything. Attendre? They attend.
“We need to laugh!” someone says.
Down the road, Place de la République
is packed, despite warnings.
Almost midnight: friends and strangers
raise candles, compose notes.
Wait for peace?
Yours will be long, Madame.
Your poems can
rest, tranquil as dust,
as a drug.
You lost me
in the dark night
of treachery
and self-love.