Café Girls

The window menu means nothing to them.

They are talking about last night:

‘les garçons’, dancing and whether

a girl who likes Godard can enjoy

Johnny Halliday’s cheesy Elvis-tribute act.

We remember the past in black-and-white,

we remember certainties, “Good Girls Don’t”

and “liberté,égalité et fraternité”

except for the crowds coming from Algeria

- less welcome than Albert or his Plague.

They are young and bold and waiting,

if not for M’sieu Right, perhaps his brother

with the prison tattoo and Belmondo’s smoulder

or even the dangerous boys who ride motorcycles

as if in Brando’s gang from that Ami film.

We remember meals of frites with everything,

we remember slim athleticism before round

bellies and Jeannot, Pierre and Elise,

our mini-selves with their own facsimile

children learning to cope with what we leave.

They are old and proud but wilting,

if not from heart disease, perhaps the ghostly death

of imprisoned minds and twisted memory

wherein the catatonic and still felt rage

resides behind the blankness of rheumy eyes.