Paris,thou art not

Paris,thou art not
merely these streets trees silence
twilight,nor even this single star jotting
nothing busily upon the green edges of evening;
nor the faces which sit and drink on the boulevards, laughing
which converse smoke smile,thou art
not only a million little ladies fluttering merely upon darkness—

these things thou art and thou art all which is alert perishable
alive:thou art the sublimation of our
lives eyes voices
thou art the gesture by which we express to one another all
which we hold more dear and fragile than death,
thou art the dark dear fragile
gesture which we use

Life ’s—let us not too much protest—not clumsy
more than another thing. Nor ungainly
but(after all)of a convenient size:
not too minute to die about
nor too big to lie about.

softly above everything the strolling
upward ghost of le tour Eiffel quietly wonderfully hangs;haunting the mai.