poem 40!

I have this horror: I hate flags
fleurs-de-lis and that Seine
on the covers of cheap re-editions
and myself as I am a woman mourning her maidenhood
recalling not the thighs themselves white tapers
or the black ruff that idled
round the beignet between them-
but the hand that clenched suddenly unfamiliar
while vendors courted even the sun on the cobbles
where rooks warred for their keep,
and little colors waned at the picture window -
and the galvanized earth under me shook wept and stilled
sorrowed and straitened and slid on
and with two points of bitumen in my eyes I knew
I had earned my keep too.