Reflections on the Ligne 3, towards rue d’Amsterdam, around eleven a.m.
A girl with a veil and eyes painted
with beauty and kohl was reading Boris Vian.
An Eastern woman was talking to the East
with a golden and silvery laugh.
An African child was asleep
on the back of his mother
and his mother was thinking so intensely
that the number of palm trees
on her saffron-yellow fabric doubled.
An Oriental gentleman was sleeping
– his briefcase as a pillow –
he probably missed more than a few hours of sleep last night.
An Italian woman wearing a black coat
was thinking she was lucky:
in her life she’d never had to “tolerate,”
just understand and deeply, sometimes, love.