THE CEMETERY AT PERE LACHAISE, PARIS

by Byron Beynon

Here the famous guests are scattered
in funerary plots and calculated divisions,
with sculpture, some reminding me of sentry-boxes,
ready and made to accommodate whole families.
During the hour or more
I stayed among the dead
I found the black and polished grave of Proust,
his name remembered in time and letters;
I searched for Balzac, Bizet,
and the young American
Jim Morrison of the Doors.
Blind men! But who's to say?
One by one the shadows disappeared.
At 89e Div 1-2 I saw
graffiti on Epstein's monument
to Oscar Wilde,
Oscar who? Someone had scrawled
in dark paint.
A gardener pointed
to Piaf's place,
smothered in flowers and notes,
as children from a school party
sketched Chopin's marble face.
Nobody could disturb them,
they had completed their cycle
in a city touched by sunshine and dust,
where unknown visitors leave bouquets,
vulnerable petals that see in the light.