Paris, 1922

I’d like to go to Paris in the 1920s
(getting out before the Germans come,
of course) and be an art groupie,
hanging out with Eliot and Stein
and maybe being painted as
a living watch or violin
by Salvador Dali.

Even though, as my brother observed,
the streets would stink of piss
and Paris day-to-day
would be just as barbarian
as Clacton job centre.

And yet my fantasy remains... of jazz cafes
and whores lined up outside salons
with long French cigarettes,
profiled by the elegant streetlights...
of saving some dark ma’amoiselle
from drowning in the Seine...
of being loved illicitly
by some handsome poet...

It’s all ephemera, of course,
schoolgirlish and inane,
and yet it’s what I dream when 2022
taps on the windowpane.