Harking Back
On certain Sundays at the hotel in Odéon, 1965,
around the time that Winston Churchill died,
you would kick me out of that big hard bed
to make coffee in bowls, to sip between
bleary sighs and grumbles about the lack of this,
the loss of that, the temperature of the room.
The window stood grey through February.
Ice along the ledge.
Just an ordinary winter window in the long days,
but at night a crutch to dream upon
while picking out the windows of other
exiles anonymous forging future nostalgias
in freezing green garrets just like mine.
There I would sit, snowbound, youthbound,
numb in mind and body, adrift in my world
of quaint tomorrows, longing in secret
for the comforts of friends’ homes:
eggs and bacon, central heating, unstained sheets.
And when my imaginary lover
shifted in her sleep, I took my place beneath
the 8-watt bulb, stub of martyr’s pencil poised,
thinking that in the afternoon I might loiter outside
Shakespeare and Company in the Rue de la Bûcherie
running through my Young Hemingway impressions,
and later lounge behind the broad plate glass
of the Dôme or the Rotonde, feeling just a bit
like Jimmy Joyce. But soon I’d get caught up
in my labours and forget about you, the window,
the dead, and the wealthy Parisienne
from a week ago who sniffed at me suspiciously
and said: ‘You’re the first real writer I’ve met.’
About this poem
In December 1964 I gave up my wine-and-taxi, freelance-photographer-in-London life and went to Paris to try my hand at writing while starving. Turning out to have a real flair for the second of these, I spent the early weeks of the following year in an unheated low-ceilinged room at the top of the aptly-named Hotel Novelty in the Odéon district. This poem, written in the early 1970s, literally harks back to that period.
Written on January 04, 1973
Submitted by wordybug on August 23, 2022
Modified on April 10, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 5 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABXXCX DXXAECXBXXXX EXXBDXXXXXXDX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,375 |
Words | 260 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 12, 13 |
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"Harking Back" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/134707/harking-back>.
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