For Don Ernsting
Light scatters through frail leaves in bay
windows. A band of smog-softened sun
edges along the chaise longue. A jewel
ignites when beams reach the bottle
and I raise my eyes to hear you say:
The past is a feeble attempt at the present.
This former is Weltstadt is on the ebb.
We must soon pack our books and move on.
But not yet. We both need another.
With any luck we’ll be in bed before
this digests, fake moonlight from the neons
falling across our shoulders and chests.
***
The Weltstadt in question was Montreal. Don, a bookseller and collectionneur had been displaced there by the postwar sexual puritanism of the Dutch.
We had met on the M.S. Alexander Pushkin, a Soviet liner which plied the North Atlantic, one of the three transatlantic crossings I’ve made.
We were bound for a year in Paris, where we regularly met at the Flore or Deux Magots for drinking and … just checking things out.
This was not as banal as it has become since 1972.
Our friendship continued on our return to Montreal and for years thereafter. As did the ambiguity which is the true topic of this poem.