The Moving Mirror Of Time Poem by Alexandre Nodopaka

The city flows on either side
of an ample body of water
not broad enough not to see
from one shore to the other.

Steel and cement rainbows interlink
humans and the embankments
the way passion binds opposing thighs
that in time birthed Notre Dame

and the Eiffel Tower,
Sydney Bechet of jazz fame
and hoochie coochie Josephine.
Whence the Sun King

ruled from Versailles
and a Corsican son of the mist
became an emperor.
Where in his bathtub Marat was slain and

Antoinette lost her hairdo to the blade.
At some time they all must have gazed
in the mirror of the sinuous river
and despite their images diluting in the

Atlantic and the watery denizens gobbling
their archives I eat the fish to better recall
the transient reminiscences of history
sailing past my irises of my eyes.