This news from Stephen Beal:
Saturday I received two copies of the French poetry journal Midi in which a poem of mine appears. It concerns the Marche de la Poesie, the 23rd thereof, which I attended in June 2005. (Pansy always attends.) Between thirty to forty poetry "vendors" -- magazines and publishers--managing individual booths in the plaza Saint Sulpice before the eponymous church. I dedicated the poem to the French poet Jean Barral, a good friend, but I didn't know till Saturday that he'd translated the poem for Midi.
Marché de la Poésie
Paris, Place Saint Sulpice
23 – 26 Juin, 2005
for Jean Barral
C’est poétique! I cry to a woman whose flowered summer skirt has blown up
to disclose her dark red panties.
My, it’s been hot in Paris these past three days, and now comes the storm that we’ve been hoping for—on the first day of the poetry market, at five in the afternoon—and it sends publishers and poets and editors scurrying for cover into their booths, covering their wares and rolling down their awnings.
A big striped umbrella takes off for Saint Sulpice, and I follow, arriving in the portico among wet poétiques and surprised homeless, then retreating into the cavern of the church while the thunder thunders and the rain rains and my heart pounds with joy—
joy for the poetry, joy for the storm, joy for the church, joy for God above, joy for the broken heat, extinguished like the devil on this day of summer days.
