! ! Taking Coffee 'With' Jean-Paul Sartre. Poem by Michael Shepherd

It was 1952. We had a limited travel currency.
In Paris, I went one morning to
the Dome Café. There
sat Jean-Paul Sartre, smoking
a large meerschaum pipe
such as Kierkegaard or Nietzsche might have smoked;
he had his morning coffee in front of him.
Simone had not yet joined him.

A circle of young admirers sat at a
discreet distance; most wore black
but the young women could not avoid
a certain Parisian chic in their sombreness,
their existential frown and turned-down lips
around bright eyes.

It was the chance of what we call
a lifetime. Dare I speak to him?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained:
a human being must live his words,
act out his own chosen life in honesty
like Ché Guevara..

I moved to his table. The circle of admirers
were all attention. I saw two of them
surreptitiously take out small notebooks.

‘Is this seat free, Monsieur? ’ He knew me for
a stranger in that theatre of the absurd
we call life, where all are strangers.

His arm was a signifier. His hand
indicated an empty seat (not the closest,
which awaited Simone) : his shoulder
gave the slightest Gallic shrug. We make
our own decisions, live by them.

An awed waiter, affecting nonchalance,
brought my coffee. Should I speak to Sartre
of teenage mountaineering in Canada
and the discovery of philosophy?

No. We would then be
to each other, The Other.

We sat there silent: two beings without meaning
whose meeting was prefigured, whom
only a Creator could have put there;
a Creator whom we must deny.

I spoke through the dry lips of one
who had not yet attained an authentic
aloneness:
‘This coffee is good, n’est-ce pas, Monsieur? ’
Two students took up their pencils.

‘Ca, c’est.. vy I com heere.’

We sat, two human beings magnificent in the
heroism of their aloneness, enjoying,
if that’s the word, a shared appreciation of the coffee
carefully watched by the intellect..

The coffee drunk, I stood up, with a
slight bow – ‘Monsieur..’
He glanced up, but not at me;
Simone had appeared.

I walked away, glorying in
the heroism of those who know they have no heroes,
writing the words of their life,
living by them. The students, awed,
watched my body language for clues
to existence, which might then reveal
essence. Or not.


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