Cemetery Honeymoon


    Pere LaChaise, Paris, 11.96


    Taking the underground route


    to the city of the dead,


    passing by billboard ads,


    we watch map sellers


    watch us


    while the devil


    beats his wife


    in the rain.


    The air lacks jazz.


    It''s filled with the absent sound of strings


    and accordion wind winding


    with slow train motion.


    We join the lost roamers in silence.


    Words on tombstones overcrowd the silence,


    clamoring recognition for names of the dead.


    Flowers try to escape statue embraces


    with restless child motion


    and run along streets that cover every corner


    of the map that doesn''t explain


    where the hidden violin players play


    their endless music to the applause of rain.


    Old women huddle out of the rain


    inside open mausoleums in silence,


    remembering


    when they were shaped like violins.


    They reminisce of old, devilish lovers


    and admire the dead.


    Puzzling, one flicks drizzle off her map


    with a quick, dismissing motion.


    Our eyes remain in motion


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.under the angel rain.


    We have no map


    and search in silence


    for famous artists, all dead,


    who wait for sympathetic, serenading violins.


    But I no longer play the violin;


    my hands have learned a different type of motion.


    I think that we are the least tragic of lovers,


    not being dead


    and whose only hardship is to walk in the rain,


    happily,


    under an umbrella of silence,


    using each other as a map.


    We lack the performer''s right to bow.


    Death is an invisible bow


    that plays the fifth fiddle string.


    Death is the blackest silence


    that obscures all motion.


    Through it


    you saw the fire


    behind the rain,


    saw the day render itself dead.


    We use the dead


    as an outdated map


    of our success


    and use rain


    as the saddest violin song


    to keep us in motion


    and save us from silence.


    - Kat Isacson