First I think of Jesus, or not actually Jesus,
but the vapour trail from a jet, which makes
a line across the hard sky parallel with the top
of my window, which makes me think of Apollinaire
who said in a poem that Jesus is the holder
of the world high altitude record, a truly modern
aviator, and that’s how I think of Jesus,
being in Paris and all, the thing with Apollinaire.
But I’m looking at the line the vapour trail makes,
which way up in the sky would form a perfect T
with the tip of the Eiffel Tower (the tip of the
Tour Eiffel sounds better in a poem) if the Tour Eiffel
were a fair whack higher. You know what I mean:
blue symmetries of summer. And then I notice,
and here’s what the poem’s about, when my eyes
are making the imaginary T, just above the point
where my imaginary much higher Tour Eiffel
would meet the vapour trail, a crescent moon.
A crescent moon so thin and faint it’s almost not there
in the hot white Paris sky. But it is there,
and it’s above the Eiffel Tower, pardon,
la Tour Eiffel, and it’s above the vapour trail
that Jesus in a jet has made. What do I learn
from this experience? Well, in two weeks’ time,
if the weather holds, and it should, there’ll be
a fat full moon over Paris, and I’m up the hill
in Montmartre, with a view to fucking die for.
I can see three quarters of the sky, so I’m sure
that around two weeks from now, one way
or another, I’ll be seeing that fat full moon.
And this is a thought that is not at all unpleasant.