Monday Aug 10th – theme Hot & Cold
Monday Aug 17th – theme On the Road

Meet at the Place Louis Aragon from 8pm. It’s the western end of the Île Saint-Louis. Open air poetry starts at 9pm. If you can’t find us, text +33 626901326 Bring your own drink.

We’ll probably wind up in a bar after the words have been said, the songs sung.

Who was Louis Aragon?
Poet, surrealist, Communist, journalist and editor, novelist. Born in Paris in 1897, involved in Dada before founding the surrealist review Littérature with André Breton. Many of his poems were put to music and sung. He died in 1982.

The essentials

I love you by black paths
Like those who have no home
And who walk all night
Everywhere, exerting themselves
I write your name on all the walls
That my love won’t die with me
Let them be memory at my whisper
And proof of where I passed

Where I lost my human shadow
Where I mixed living and my dreams
Where I took your hand in my palm
And crossed your steps with my steps
So much that finally the time that rises
As well as a perfume, complete
The dawn of us whose wonder
Is that we will not see it

— from ”Je t’aime par les chemins noirs”

David (technical assistance) and Cesar (poetry) in July.

Here’s a poem he wrote in 1944 about his city:

Paris

Où fait-il bon même au coeur de l’orage
Où fait-il clair même au coeur de la nuit
L’air est alcool et le malheur courage
Carreaux cassés l’espoir encore y luit
Et les chansons montent des murs détruits

Jamais éteint renaissant de la braise
Perpétuel brûlot de la patrie
Du Point-du-Jour jusqu’au Père-Lachaise
Ce doux rosier au mois d’août refleuri
Gens de partout c’est le sang de Paris

Rien n’a l’éclat de Paris dans la poudre
Rien n’est si pur que son front d’insurgé
Rien n’est ni fort ni le feu ni la foudre
Que mon Paris défiant les dangers
Rien n’est si beau que ce Paris que j’ai

Rien ne m’a fait jamais battre le coeur
Rien ne m’a fait ainsi rire et pleurer
Comme ce cri de mon peuple vainqueur
Rien n’est si grand qu’un linceul déchiré
Paris Paris soi-même libéré

Louis Aragon, 1944

Cheers all,
David Barnes
Organiser