VII.
(from Castelnaudary to Villeneuve to Azille)

On the road from the Black Mountains
Darkness oppresses.
Each village offers a surprise.
Which direction to go?

Stopping for water I see the silver moon so far away
As a flea sees a distant beam:
How far is the moon?
How long is the journey?
How wide is time?
Is it too late to change?
To dig deep to the profound?
To bring forth a better picture.

If I accept time and whatever falls
I accept blindly and in full vision
The way that lies before me.

Holding back no more
surrender to the path---
The source and end of my being.

On and on as the road winds like a ribbon
Where the moonlight paints oaks and pines in dull green
To the floor of the valley where Ricquet conceived his great canal.


VIII.
(Narbonne)

I find you among the white stones of the cathedral
Along ‘les promenades sur le canal’
Beneath the dark bridge
Along with bent women taking refuge from the full storm.

I heard you in the splashing waterfall
Beneath red and white flower petals
Near the dancing, swinging willow fingers.

Pierre Paul Ricquet’s canal bisects
The ancient Roman city of Narbonne
Forcing citydwellers higher and higher
Into colored porches and homes.

So many people wandering in the market
Along the emerald green canal.
Each face another beginning
Fresh light
hidden in the power of creation.

It is awake in perfect illumination
When I see you smiling once more.
Once again it is Romance.
Dark mother with her rolly-polly baby.

A young crippled girl’s clacking brace sending an uneven rhythm
Stops to say ‘Bonjour!’
Her smile is purity.
I am healed of schism, battle, division.
Tearing winds wash the pages clean.
This morning I see traces of you in every particle of this city.


IX.
(Bibliotheque- Narbonne)
In Narbonne’s central library
I found a book entitled, “Le quatrieme dimension.”

“Of all of the mysteries forgotten
which we once knew:
Space in its timelessness
Time in its spacelessness.
Aristotle’s Physics demonstrates that
Speed is defined as the measure of space traversed in time…and so on.”

Somehow sideways academic glances
fall short of these momentary poetic glimpses---
“The great distance of macrosystem,” or
“Infinitesimal space of microsystem”
such theories are thin smoke crawling to escape the most pressing fire.

The wind tears strongly, heavy sunlight burns on
As day after day marches past the village square
past the fountain
to the burgundy sign I spy
Great letters in white paste read:
CAVE COOPERATIVE
D’AZILLE MINERVOIS
As a monument to itself
6 years to the day I last read this sign
Identical to the last detail
It is I who have changed.

But what is the poetic “I”?
What after all is a poem?