Today we arrived in Paris on the train from Köln, relieved to be out of Germany. The taste of blood in the air is much lighter here. We abandoned our theoretically three star moth-eaten hotel on the rue de Rivoli for the Hotel Relais St.-Jacques in the 5th (Latin Quarter).

We ate a salad and ham and cheese tartin at the corner of St.-Jacques and Abbé, then showered and unpacked in our old-fashioned floral room. After we ate, as S. was buying salami for later at an Italian traiteur, I watched across St.-Jacques as the 60 or so kids from the deaf school signed to one another around a drum circle. A moment for the ascendancy of the poetic morpheme.

***

The waitress here at Le Mauzac just asked me if it was a roman I was writing. I babbled that it was only a journal, but had the presence of mind to quickly add that it also contained several poems I was working on. She seemed delighted and told the waiter that I was a poet, though in English, of course. I’m already packing boxes for the move. In my mind.