When the fellows at Paddy Toomy’s bar ask “Is Muldoon still in Paris?” just say, “Nobody knows.”
I’d like my favorite lady to toss my ashes from le Pont d’ Austerlitz for one last voyage with the Seine along the banks of my beloved Paris. I do hope it is late September and drizzling. I would like a typical drizzle wetting the gray zinc roofs. And let there be one more lovely girl from one of the provinces who pulls up the collar of her green raincoat as she hurries out of Guilbert Philo or Guibert Bio. Her plastic sack contains the books she will use as she takes her place for the first time on a bench in the Sorbonne. And as she walks the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, she will be sure she is discovering the real Paris as only she can know it, and she will be right.
Ile de France, you island of white limestone, I thank my Maker for allowing me to spend so much time with you, for permitting me to walk your streets and cross your bridges, for letting me see the many magnificent forms that skilful hands have shaped— the angels and saints that dress your Gothic doors and windows, the monsters that stare down from Notre Dame at the magical river that circles you and reflects your beauty. And as I float between the quays under le Pont St Michel, please God, let a few of my ashes enter the porous limestone quays just before I get to Pont Neuf, for I want a part of me to remain here in the center of my lovely lady.
Yes, I hope it’s drizzling on the million and one varied chimneys that decorate the wet gray roofs. And may every chimney stand for one of the links that have crowned this jewel of the world. My wide-eyed girl in the green raincoat is the latest link in the endless round. She is Sainte Genevieve and Jules Cesar, Balzac and Baudelaire; she is James Joyce and Jean Paul Sartre.
Yes, Lord, please let it be drizzling when I make my final voyage past this beautiful gray world I love so much on that day when I must say, Good-bye — my Paris — au revoir...
(c) Bill Mahoney 2004.