The City of Light

SOMEWHERE TO PARIS 

BY RICHARD BLANCO

by Alphonse Liébert

The sole cause of a man's unhappiness
is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
PASCAL, Pensées

The vias of Italy turn to memory with each turn

and clack of the train’s wheels, with every stitch

of track we leave behind, the duomos return again

to my imagination, already imagining Paris—

a fantasy of lights and marble that may end

when the train stops at Gare de l’Est and I step

into the daylight. In this space between cities,

between the dreamed and the dreaming, there is

no map—no legend, no ancient street names

or arrows to follow, no red dot assuring me:

you are here—and no place else. If I don’t know

where I am, then I am only these heartbeats,

my breaths, the mountains rising and falling

like a wave scrolling across the train’s window.

I am alone with the moon on its path, staring

like a blank page, shear and white as the snow

on the peaks echoing back its light. I am this

solitude, never more beautiful, the arc of space

I travel through for a few hours, touching

nothing and keeping nothing, with nothing

to deny the night, the dark pines pointing

to the stars, this life, always moving and still.

From Directions to the Beach of the Dead. Copyright © 2005 by Richard Blanco. Published by The University of Arizona Press.