35.

The winds rise over the plain outside Paris

The sun bounces off the cranes, buildings

Crop from the broken earth, ancient battles

Erased from the land. Her eyes once gazed

Over the hedges before the imported palms

The lovers on the train oblivious.

Was it the first as France grew from island

To empire, a woman at the centre, and she

In verse, wood, stone a monument, as though?

The heat of her lips, the blood of the cross

Confused the blush that time has left us,

And later Petrarch, finding refuge

In Avignon, wrote. What of your voice, touch,

Left behind on the platform at Crécy?