HOTEL GRIGIO
I am wearing that hat again, the one with
the Polish grain and the broken eagle, an
inside patch now soiled and gloomed from
oil and sweat. It was never to matter, I always
knew, because no one sees inside me.
-
Stumbling, and with these shaky hands, I find
a fat cigarette in French-coat pockets. I am of
such International Man fervor that this all comes
very easily now. I light the scratchy match and
smoke like a bum - leaning on a wall, this
old building has a grime of red brick that I
carry away - clothing, like life, just fades.
-
The intensity of a moment never carries well into
the next - moment, not world. Even here, as I
leave the Hotel Grigio, I feel as if, having fallen
somehow from the 17th century, I've lost all
those meanings which make modern time
sensible. Something to understand, where
there's nothing left at all to see.
-
Ma mere used to say I was 'qu'ell characteur' -
she wrote it down one day for me, in her peasant's
handwriting and mis-spelled way. She also mouthed
'oeuvre la porte' once too often, and died alone in
her Chantierre bed. With her, everything was wrong.
-
Now my marbles have slithered down, rolled their
cantankerous way along gutters and drains and ended
only where there was no more space to roll. If even
I knew how to say it - in my mother's broken French,
'dead end Harry' would have to come to mind. I am
of such the broken spirit that it would probably fit.
-
I think that I shall buy a new hat,
and then begin to wear it.
I am wearing that hat again, the one with
the Polish grain and the broken eagle, an
inside patch now soiled and gloomed from
oil and sweat. It was never to matter, I always
knew, because no one sees inside me.
-
Stumbling, and with these shaky hands, I find
a fat cigarette in French-coat pockets. I am of
such International Man fervor that this all comes
very easily now. I light the scratchy match and
smoke like a bum - leaning on a wall, this
old building has a grime of red brick that I
carry away - clothing, like life, just fades.
-
The intensity of a moment never carries well into
the next - moment, not world. Even here, as I
leave the Hotel Grigio, I feel as if, having fallen
somehow from the 17th century, I've lost all
those meanings which make modern time
sensible. Something to understand, where
there's nothing left at all to see.
-
Ma mere used to say I was 'qu'ell characteur' -
she wrote it down one day for me, in her peasant's
handwriting and mis-spelled way. She also mouthed
'oeuvre la porte' once too often, and died alone in
her Chantierre bed. With her, everything was wrong.
-
Now my marbles have slithered down, rolled their
cantankerous way along gutters and drains and ended
only where there was no more space to roll. If even
I knew how to say it - in my mother's broken French,
'dead end Harry' would have to come to mind. I am
of such the broken spirit that it would probably fit.
-
I think that I shall buy a new hat,
and then begin to wear it.
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