almost
The streets grow loud with the tambour of laughter.
In the normally quiet witching hour, carols tumble, unplanned, from merry crowds.
Even the stoic gendarmerie patrolling the Champ de Mars are showing their smiles.
For it’s almost Christmas.
Servants, having gotten their Christmas bonuses,
practically dance the mahogany halls,
crowned in festive paper ivy and borrowed silver bells,
humming in merry misrule - as if all rank has turned topsy-turvy.
Downstairs, the chef (Julian) is in fine, bustling form,
like a magician setting up a great trick.
For things are getting serious - thirty Christmas geese,
a ghostly-pale flock for feasting, arrived this morning, as did some
very large salmon, crates of cheese, fruit, liqueurs, and champagne.
Peter and I were hoping for a calm Christmas day
but that dream’s no longer in play.
For on Christmas day, Grandmère celebrates brunch
with two hundred and some fifty of her closest, most indecorous friends.
I’m the corrected granddaughter.
“Oh, you must come to this one,” Grandmère said, in an injured whisper.
I can’t resist that tone in her voice. “If we must,” I sighed.
So I will be, for a few hours at least, a reluctant holiday prisoner.
“Good,” she smiled, her voice restored in victory.
”I bought you a dress,” she added slyly for mollification.
My ears perked up - she knows the designers I like.
“It was just delivered to your room,” she said knowingly.
“Oh, who will suffer to rescue me?” I asked Peter, in mock drama.
“Don’t look at me,” he said, taking refuge behind a mug of frozen eggnog.
.
.
A Christmas playlist for this:
daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_30.mp3
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