Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,—that is all
Ye
know on earth, and all ye need to know.
from
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
by
John Keats
Let us assume for no apparent reason
that the name of the street is Rue
Montclair,
an ordinary lane miles from the electric
frenzy of Paris.
And let us further assume that it is a
spring day—
any day in April will do.
It is two in the afternoon.
There is time to look forward with a
modicum of anticipation
as well as look back with a minimum of
regret.
And there is time to sweep and polish
the gloriously mundane that hangs
invisibly
from rooftops of curved tiles and gray
slate.
Such is our stage, for we are going to
observe
the lazy, mosquito-like activity of this
offshoot.
Call us peeping toms or sociologists
or painters looking for a suitable subject
to put on canvas—it makes no difference.
A slim man with thin hair pedals a bicycle
with petunias in a basket hung on
handlebars.
He works for the flower shop on the left,
the one with the weathered red awning
above a window with the unremarkable name
of Fleur Montclair, but it is all
that it needs to be.
He passes a rotund balding man
carrying a brown paper sack of baguettes
from the bakery called Patisserie Celine.
A triangle of sunlight has shifted
ever-so-slightly since we’ve been
watching,
perhaps by a degree of arc, no more,
so that it tilts more sharply against the
masonry
of the stationer’s shop that carries
exotic inks,
vellum, parchment, heavy linen paper.
It is said that even in the digital age
the French are absorbed by matters of the
heart.
A handsome man buys note paper and writes,
“Dearest Anna, I love you more than a
field
of white daisies and lilting daffodils.
Love, Charles.”
Two lovers, arms around each other’s
waists,
step absentmindedly over cobblestones
to cross our small work-in-progress.
They kiss, moist lip against moist lip,
which is exactly what two o’clock demands.
There is, of course, the mandatory café,
where someone drinks a small cup of coffee
while another anticipates evening with a
glass of wine.
They stare at a point beyond our ken,
absorbed in reveries of things to come or
moments lost.
It is time to leave now,
and whether we have witnessed stereotypes
or a street that somehow got caught
in a web of bygone days,
it is nevertheless serene as the sun grows
brighter in its falling,
Would you not agree that it is almost too
much to bear
to behold beauty that would fit
in a shadow box hung on wall in need of
paint?
~William Hammett
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