I have a friend, Francoise Papillion, from Montreal.
She is an amazing pianist and I had been told about her before I met her.
I had gone to montreal for a
visa and was expecting to meet
up with her but as it turned out I didn't meet up with her a
few weeks after that. In all of the time that I had known her I had promised to
cook dinner for a group of us.
Then one of these people left for another country.
So as an apology I wrote her this
poem in lieu of the
uncooked dinner.
appetiser
i knew your name
once saw a bush chopped into its shape,
saw a film with thousands of them in it,
before i met you, i walked the old streets of montreal,
got lost in that landscape and expected some kind of meeting.
another friend of a friend is what you were
going to be an evenings entertainment in a strange city.
going to be one more moment to remember in a weekend of remembrances,
how would you have fit in with the pancakegirls and
all the rest?
the main course
months later a small room overwhelmed,
was it your hair that was playing the piano?
draped around and down
the motions jockeying forth from it
seemed so in tune with the noise i heard,
small frail creature in the eye of the sound
there must have been some silence?
your fingers railed across the keys and the air froze,
your touch touched everyone in the room
over and the sounds subsided and stand silently as ever,
smiling and thinking thoughts of music.
desert
now the apologies are mine,
the dinner never materialized,
the german departed,
the moment passed,
the poem is desert
by me