Jean-Jacques
My colleague, Jean-Jacques,
had ideas of reform.
He tempted me —
we went to have a coffee
at a restaurant in Tours,
one of those delightful little
restaurants of France,
where you sit outdoors,
in open view of any chance,
and free to openly decry
the failings of the passers-by. . .
We drank café — that lovely dark
and potent brew, that generates
ideas, plans, and inspirations
of a sordid or exalted kind,
as dragon-slaying, secret incest,
or violent revolution.
Jean-Jacques conceived ideas —
his sister wrote them down,
all across his body in the dark,
taking dictation under cover
of a flannel sheet, translating
inspiration into marks
upon his body, prodigies
of inspiration, which, when morning
waked them, sunshine roused them,
she would read, before he bathed,
aloud, and he, the author, would
transcribe on paper, giving
permanence in daytime to the
prodigy he birthed at night.
