Venezuelan-American writer Megin Jiménez wrote this poem “a few years ago when I was writing a series in the voice of cities. It’s Paris recounting a dream, a nightmare of a fire wakes it up, the rose window in Notre Dame like a big eye.”
Most of us who’ve been to Paris have stood in awe at the sight of Notre Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité, but the recent fire affected more than just selfie snapping tourists, it affected all of us everywhere who love art, Gothic architecture, Jesus, the Virgin Mary…In the poem below the city dreams of fire, in reality we’ll see what rises from the ashes.
The City Dreaming
A blue-eyed Celt leaps onto a flying buttress.
The river churns with fish, they are all replaced with boats.
Objects and their owners come from Everywhere.
I am sung, cursed, reproduced in sublime shades.
A child-king lies awake in fear of underground passages
the art students take one hundred years later.
When I become barren, pears are brought in, wine,
fat tomatoes, their provincial bearers mocked for their ignorance.
Heads turn in a dance step, heads bow with thought;
heads are lopped from their necks, heads speak different tongues.
Masses push at narrow streets with bayonets and pamphlets
until they burst into boulevards.
I weep, my lavish landmarks blasphemed.
At the cries of “Fire! Fire!” the Rose Window snaps open, I awake.
Megin Jiménez is a Venezuelan-American translator, poet and writer. Her book of prose poems and hybrid texts, Mongrel Tongue, was selected by Daniel Borzutzky for the 1913 Prize for First Books and is forthcoming from 1913 Press in Fall 2019. Her poems and essays have appeared in Barrow Street, Denver Quarterly, The Best American Poetry Blog, Barrelhouse, Mantis, The Inquisitive Eater, NOÖ Journal, LIT, Tarpaulin Sky, Redivider and other journals. She lives in Leiden, the Netherlands. Visit meginjimenez.com for more.
Poignant and pertinent, on many fronts; the geographies if author and place in the now.