I Shall Die In Paris

After Black Stone on Top of a White Stone by César Vallejo

I shall die in Paris
in the arms of my lover –
over and over – with the taste
of fois gras and champagne
on my lips.

I shall die in Paris
at the Louvre as I journey
through time in every painting,
live the lives of the artists, turpentine
crackling paint: Blue Boy, Mona Lisa –
her sly smile, dying again.

Little deaths, petits morts,
soft, vulnerable, step through the alleys
where revolutions were born
to the Left Bank where music leaks
from an old, dusty piano shop.

I shall die in Paris
with the sound of a whispering
language, eloquent and foreign
in my ears.

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