"Paris by Night" by Tristan Corbière

On this day in 1951, Paris celebrated its 2,000th birthday. The city was founded sometime around 250 A.D. by a Gallic tribe known as the Parisii.

"Paris by Night" by Tristan Corbière

It’s not a city, it’s a world

— It’s the sea: — dead calm — The Spring tide has felt bound,
With a distant rumbling, to withdraw its sway.
Its waves will return, rolling themselves in their sound —
— Can you hear the crabs of night scratching away…

— It’s the dried-up Styx: Rag ’n bone Diogenes,
Lantern in hand, wanders down it; he never squirms
But it’s the black gutter where depraved poets please
To cast their lines, their hollow skulls the cans for worms.

— It’s the wheat-field: Hideous harpies swirl and swoop
On what’s impure, gleaning shreds of lint caked in pus.
The alley cat, on the watch for rats, flees the troop
Of Shit-creek’s sons, harvesters of night’s detritus.

— It’s death: Here lieth the police — And love, upstairs,
Taking a siesta, sucks a heavy arm’s meat
Where an old love-bite’s left its blotch — Love is for pairs —
The hour is solitary — Listen: … dreams drag their feet…

— It’s life: Listen: the spring water is up for air,
Singing its everlasting song, that seems to slide
Over a sea-god’s slimy head, and his stretched bare
Green limbs on the bed of the Morgue… Eyes open wide!

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Perhaps no other European city has so captured the poetic imagination as has Paris. Poems of Paris covers a wide range of time, from the Renaissance to the present, and includes not only the pantheon of classic French poets, from Ronsard to Baudelaire to Mallarmé, but also tributes by visitors to the city and famous expatriates from all over the world, including Pablo Neruda, Samuel Beckett, Rainer Maria Rilke, Vladimir Nabokov, Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski, and many more. All the famous sights of Paris are touched on here, from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower, as are such classic Parisian themes as food, drink, and love, and famous events from the Revolution to the Resistance. READ more here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/poems-of-paris-by-edi…/