CARNIVAL

Sudden heavy rain scatters on the skylights

of the hotel’s restaurant – and finds a small gap

in the putty last summer baked biscuit-dry.

A drop falls then another onto the floor’s tiles.

The apologetic waitress carries

my Pastis, Vittel and Madeleines

to a dry table near the door. I follow

with the ashtray and packet of Gitanes.

She asks me if later I am going to see

the carnival in the square. I say, ‘Peut être’.

I have just finished my liqueur, eaten my cakes,

and am about to light up another Gitanes,

when two early, sodden, loud revellers

enter the restaurant. The smoke and noise

of the carnival follows them briefly.

I think of ‘Une Soirée Au Carnaval’,

that surreal painting by Henri Rousseau,

part time artist, full time customs officer.

A woman and a man in fancy dress

stand in front of dark, calm, leafless trees.

He looks at us, she at him. He is Pierrot,

she Columbine in a peasant bonnet.

A street lamp has been lit. In the clear, dry sky,

a full moon and scattered stars are shining.

There is only the soft soughing of the wind.

Though they are dressed for joy, there seems to be

no merriment. They are impassive, still.

Meanwhile, in the round window of what might be

a shelter in the wintry copse where

Columbine and Pierrot patiently wait,

lit by the street lamp is an older man’s head.

He has a moustache, and wears a peaked cap.

The new customers are dressed in costume too: he

as Marie Antoinette, observing

the crumbs of Madeleine still on my plate,

and winking; she as Louis XV,

smirking at my apparent disapproval

of such contraband merriment. ‘Après nous

– le deluge!’ she guffaws.