I’ve been reading Louis MacNiece, revelling in it once more. A friend’s comment on a poem sent me back to ‘Snow’ and from there to others, found in various online sites, including the wonderful, British Poetry Archive with its recordings of poets reading their poems, which has several MacNiece poems. The friend who set me off on this quest also sent me ‘Soap Suds,’ which I had never read: https://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/lm-soap.htm.

A sunny Paris morning with street noise: a woman on her phone, a one-sided bit of a conversation, delivery vans stopping and starting, one street over a siren passing, fading. I am proofreading the manuscript for my book Apple Thieves, last minute changes, trying to decide whether to delete or keep the poem I’m working on.

Gym after lunch, window shopping on my way at Compagnie, a book shop I love across from the Sorbonne, a few steps from the statue of Montaigne, whose bronze foot in its soft-looking bronze slippers is well-polished by passersby.

Beverley Bie Brahic