December In Paris

December Paris Winter Paris pavement cafés vacant chairs and poor sparrows look for baguette crumbs. Artists had gone to their loft conversions, in bed with their models and plates of goose liver pate, waiting for a better time. I came across a posh bistro people inside wore silk suits, doors locked; invitation only. A famous philosopher came out, said something deep about peace- in broken English- then asked where the camera was. When he saw I wasn’t a journalist he said: Merde, and walked back in. At the bookshop Shakespeare, academic tourists had assembled they looked through books of famous writers, thought of saying that two of my poetry collections were there, but they looked so educated, wore capes of superiority and poetry workshop shoes I lost my nerve. Rain, found a bistro at a side street, had coffee with an Armagnac, thought of the days when Ernest Hemingway scribbled away here, other writers too, when Paris was not so haughtily conscious of her artistic status.