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I sit in my garrett
seven floors above
the Rue De Seine
swilling cider from a tall bottle
I hear the yodel
of the fishmonger
in the market street
below my window
And happy shrieks of street crazies
And honking of the flat-sided cars
And the babble of the new formed rabble
surrounding a self-annointed
charlatan who bullshits
and believes he is an apostle
as he hawks his contraband
to the glee of cackling
standers-by
Sounds made by the next-door lovers
amplified through my cardboard walls
make me insaner than
a mountain goat
Young German boys
students
of the Sorbonne
soddenly thud down hallways
and pound past midnight
on the doors of ladyfriends
coy but cautious
of drunken amours
I raise again
the cool green bottle
and my teeth become numb
while I use up my thoughts
in trying to decide which
would have been best
To have been born a bird
Or Beaudelaire.
--from France Poems
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