Aix-en-Provence

On the Cours Mirabeau,
There are sculptures of Herculean men
Supporting wrought iron balconies
Where aristocracies once pulled their shutters closed.
Forsaken from the impiety of plebeian mannerism,
The vehemently blessed hath renounced their divinity
In a religion of mirrors telling nothing of the soul.

Much has passed unseen as fateless clock hands
Do not recall the spaces between their bold-faced destinations.
As if, per chance, something has keeled over
Between the gaps of this great net that shall result
By no other murmuring than cranial capacity,
Then let it be- a singable notion,
This humane naivety- unknown.

But save all conception of time,
Now I sit on that same gentile Cours
Whilest pondering leads me to people
Walking freely in the street.
I know not bounteous claim of the multitudes
Of black cloth flapping its wings as precisely
As hands flipping pages in belfries of books.

The French are as quick to change society
As they are at conforming to that which
They have molded accordingly,
But what would any poet have written
Of mortality this or that?
Regard, the strategically lined trees
In uniform rows, aesthetic bliss!
Louis the XIVth wroughtly desired to
Cantor outside through a corridor paneled
With the paintings of nature.
He was too fat to look up at the opulent sky
And see the vision of Cézanne stroking
Its graces with pink elephants.

Cars are dancing around four fountains
Whilest those same inglorious people
Are seeping through,
And in a dark corner on the Cours Mirabeau
The poet's eyes grow fat like sponges.