The sun rose over the Champs-Élysées

The sun rose over the Champs-Élysées
As my cigarettes dirtied
Your view.

Wine bottles filtered the sun
In the gutter
Like the dead
Disapproved of our steps

As my ash
Coined their eyes.

It was worth the climb
To watch
This town burn
And every villager run.

Still their mouths
Spoke of dirt
The way we spoke of love.

The sun rose
But did not speak.

Late tonight I will
close down the machine
lock all the doors and
turn off the lights

I will lie in bed,
pondering what I did this week
what happened last year and
dozens of other years

Some time after midnight,
as I fall asleep
The sun will rise across Europe
on the other side of the Ocean
over the Reine,
over the Champs-Élysées

The sun will shine on these places,
though I have never seen them.

I believe them to be real-
as real as people I once knew
and as dreamlike as the person I once was.

Spilled wine, flowing
Unevenly from broken vessels
Stained the road, mixing violet with crimson
Underhues

My table, overturned
My companion, huddling behind for
All the protection twelve millimetres of
Aluminum could offer

Frozen in a grimace, the shock
Having come quickly. Great Paris, we were told
Home of the Artists and Gentry
A calm bubble, floating gently
On the froth of a changing Europe

The first rays of sun, glinting
Off my opened, glazed eyes
Calm, warm morning air pierced only
by the Muezzin's call to prayer