Travel, Law and Life Considered

 

Swans of Bruges

Keyvan Tabari

Copyright Keyvan Tabari 2021. All Rights Reserved.

 

Those ducks that waddle in the pond today

Remind me of the big white

Bruges’ swans that glided

In the lake

When the year was Ninety Eight.

 

And the room with the Louis Vuittons.

Was wrong, I called the desk:

My paramour’s has colors of bonds.

 

We laughed on it  

At dinner that night

In the music chamber

Of the Inn, intimate!

 

She tells me the French

She has learned

In the courtesy course,

For which she had come.

 

Of no use, when we went to lunch

For moules and beer, divine,

In a cramped Flemish

Restaurant in town.

 

More of the Flemish

We grasped

In the wall-carpets

The Cathedral hung.

And the chants of its organ,

When we reached it,

Past alleys confound.

 

(February 24, 2021)

 

I show the poem to her,

Now, some thirty years later,

Attached to another person,

As I am too.

 

“Love the poem, “ she says,

“How sublimely wonderful! “

She reflects: “A special place…

A special time… a special memory.”

 

After a pause:

“So long ago and yet so poignant.”

I say: “Thanks for the memory.”

 

(April 22, 2021)