Paris Poem by John a'Beckett

Old “Uncle Sam” Jack’s pitching on indecent
Chez Sofie, tucked bar into the bed of Rue Jacob
just off the fashion-flash of Saint Germain
down where the hot breaths of the recent
Arab owners of the hotel vie the c’est la vie
with ghost whispers, wigged Jacobins again
plotting in old revolution competition with
the pigeons and the young Scotch couple
making mad love in the Mansard. “Bah! ”,
a pedestrian.passes “Les Americains-
Ils sont toujours comme ca! ”

Been there since the War, Institution (they say)
wanting what he raves on about to take
the music form of warning, then be heeded.
No advertisements for the routine performing
but the one imagined in The Tribune. 'Needed:
Man to shoot his mouth off -the American Way-
in a bar up to the small hours of the morning...'
His speech assumed in the aroma of the sweet
black soil from the caves, pep of the Pernots,
and the somewhere-else smoke of Gitaines
“Usual monologue - Excellent Pay”

But what busy Parisians dropping in for a coup
de rouge from the late cinema take is more
a pause from gossip, entendre, pas ecouter
might even hear what he has to say 'Hey,
you French have got problems” But they
have turned their probleme into sophistique
“…now if you did things like we do them back
in the States..” but no one gives much regard
and soon some musicians set up and play serial
music around his speech proving the American
economy to be part of the French avant-guarde.