Wednesday, July 1, 2009: On the Street…Light as Light, Paris

To Go Abroad

She found it reassuring that all this,
The stone streets, the weathered, marbled buildings,
All this was here before she lived,
Before her parents or their parents lived.
And had she never seen Paris,
The city would go on without her in its mix
Of refinement and slow decay;
Only a hairline fracture of sadness would have
Formed in her,
I wish I would have.