Posing as Rimbaud

by William Doreski

A French-speaking city plain
and geometric as Saigon
but lacking tropical languor.
The boulevards sigh as a breeze
from the south excites the plane trees.
The war receded long ago,
leaving pockmarks and a hole
in my body too subtle to fill.

You don’t remember armies glinting
in the streets, gunfire voicing
a thousand objections. Too young
to register the angry verbs
that closed the theaters and cafes,
you slept away the atrocities
and grew up in a silence
to which aggrieved parties agreed.

I had volunteered to pose
as Rimbaud, a figure outlined
in smoke and history. My wound,
a theoretical effect,
bled only when someone observed.
Yet unlike the soldiers buried
under white crosses outside
the city, I lived an epic
without self-sacrifice, and thrived
in the details of my retelling.

You grew up to smile on this city,
invoking its primary colors,
while to me it will always be gray
as a sunken ship. But meeting you
on the boulevards and sharing
café au lait encourages
my belief that only fiction
ennobles us, polishing the scars
until they shine like nickel plating,
endearing us to the psyche
that’s otherwise eager to kill.