Paris, 1998. You reclined on an overstuffed chair with your eyes half-opened. I tip-toed past you, surveying the beds with worn quilts and the living area full of old world furnishings. When I went downstairs the man at the sales counter asked if I had run into you.
“No,” I said, “there was only a black cat.”
“Oh,” he said as a matter of fact, “George is in disguise.”
Every time I think of Shakespeare and Company I think of you, George Whitman, disguised as a black cat, watching me waking up to the world of words in your living room. You might be pleased to know since that evening you have kept me in your magic realm, and whenever I come across a photo or the mention of your shop I tremble with nostalgia.
This morning the news said you were gone. The overstuffed chair might be empty, but I think you had simply moved to a different corner when no one was looking.
* * *
He sleeps, among angels
and wakes
to find himself a traveler
weary from uninterested companions
to follow the light
leading down a misty trail
at the tolling of a bell.
His unshaven face harsh
against rain
coming from somewhere
even darker above
and the fever has never left him
or is it fervor that carries his body
down the wet pavement
arriving at a bench put there
once upon a time by an old cat,
black, its fur shinny, sleeps
with folded paws in an armchair
two flights above.
“Be not inhospitable to strangers,
lest they be angels in disguise.”
photo by Yauami2000
