my Pimlico girl (a 1973 romance)
my Pimlico girl (a 1973 romance)
we met beside the Regent’s Canal,
she was reading La Peste
in the original French
I straightened a Gauloise –
and in a cloud of smoke
and rive-gauche insouciance
risked a gambit,
‘j’adore Camus, ‘Sisyphe’ surtout’
she did not look up but asked,
‘would you imagine Sisyphus happy?’
wracking an impressive response, I stalled,
she broke the tumbleweed silence,
‘smoke?’
I lit a cigarette, passed it over,
as we stared at green-ink water
and swans at swim
she spoke to herself,
‘if love itself alone was enough…’
the swans serened from view
behind a tilting houseboat
she sighed,
‘swans pair for life…’
turning to me,
‘we are strangers,
yet might we share a discreet ‘liaison’
amid the madness of this city?’
I lucked on a tasty reply,
‘we are all strangers –
strangers to ourselves’
her cigarette flipped into the stream,
‘then, let’s be strangers no longer –
great loves may spring
from revolving door meetings
or even a towpath chance encounter…’
we walked a maze of streets to a discreet mews –
she opened the narrow door of a bijou pied-à-terre
and drew me to a boudoir oozing with her pleroma
we shared love until dusk – and my last Gauloise,
‘il est temps que tu partie’
‘will I see you again?’
‘bien sûr, cherie, je serais toujours là pour toi’
dazzled by the suddenness of carefree love,
I danced my way home but lost my way
now I trudge and trudge again
a tangle of pavements
sifting clouds of hazy memory,
and haunt the banks of the Regent’s Canal.
© coolhermit 2023
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That is where we end up, sifting clouds of hazy memory.”
oh yes that’s where we end up – as flatland Sisyphuses trying to recapture that fleeting moment of happiness.
This is what unbridled (path!) lust does to you: fills you with dopamine till you don’t know whether you are coming or going!
*Big grin*
Allen
Well, Allen, if an apple falls on your head… 🙂