Évreux Burning, Louviers Burning, Rouen Burning

Évreux Burning, Louviers Burning, Rouen Burning Peter Klappert I. In white, sun-flooded houses north and east, nothing stirs now in the flat expanse between two armies. South, southeast and -west? The diplomatic corps has long since swept along the avenues of grass, heading for chateaux in Lorraine, for Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Vichy, Lourdes. On the routes to Dijon, Nevers, Rennes, the hotels must be full of awesome profit: tout Paris is passing, and tout Paris is very long. II. So what would you see, on the road? A nation turned Romany gypsy. Ten million, twelve, all pouring from Belgium, Artois, Alsace. Mantes in ashes, Amiens a mass of rubble. Jam-ups of lorries, old crocks like hacks in their shafts, great broke-down mule busses, sedans and coupés, brilliantined décapotables, Gaobrons and Hispano Suissas gauges on empty, petrol tins empty, pedal carts, mopeds and motos, cyclists walking their punctures, great haywains rising up taller than houses, tilburies, tumbril-like wagons hauled by red oxen, blond heads in the straw, whole offices, prefectures, mairies pulled by five and six percherons, great flappings and squawkings of ducks in net bags, pots and bodies and, under tarpaulins stretched over barrel staves, sprawling on pettipoint pillowslips, sprawling on counterpanes, geese and goslings, mothers in piquant disorder, caged finches, matriarchs, candlesticks, The Missouri Review ¦ 49 boxes of crockery, feedbags and grain sacks, one rickety stitching machine, and discomforted children tottering on and off laps —everyone, everyone going one way, going slantwise down a country, going to restore a vineyard, to raise blue rabbits plump on marjoram and thyme, cooling like lava, everyone stopped-up for hours, pedestrians, barrows and pushcarts harnessed to husbands, wheelchairs and strollers stacked to the brim on a hat, the debris of the cities, miserabilia of the suburbs, torn strap, burst valise, one white, new, child's shoe by the road, the crossed sticks in the fields, riddled windshields, black Peugeot dashing away to the end of a leash of fire a torch in bright day —and then the stagnation in plazas, terraces emptied onto the streets, no lodging, no food, bakeries closed, lines at the telephones terminal, Évreux burning, Louviers burning, Rouen burning, and the small churches southeast and southwest a glory of candles . . . III. —well, the disc we've been spinning is about played out. Months from now, or years, when you return from your vacations in the south, he will be here, the lethargic and discouraged Christian, one of the Seven Sleepers walled-up under Decian, uncovered under Theodosius, talking, talking, talking. "Qu'es-tu devenu?" 50 ¦ The Missouri Review Peter Klappert "I continue." Do not the bones of the three kings listen as patiently to Germans in Cologne as they listened in Milan, as they listened once in Byzantine Santa Sophia? It's the same thing everywhere. Et puis? One of the Magi has milk teeth! C'est pareil. We relics tend the prayers of our defacto owners. "Je hai les tours de Saint-Sulpice Et chaque foi que j'y passe J'y pisse. J'aime les tours de Saint-Sulpice Et quand par hazard je les rencontre Je pisse contre!" (For a note on "Evreux Burning..." see the contributor's note by Peter Klappert in this issue.) Peter Klappert The Missouri Review · 51 ...