La Vie en Rose by Dan KastenI have lived long enough to look at pictures of you
and turn them into numbers
with you, there was a time when each tomorrow was a day of days
without you, I longed for you like a violin phrase
looking for an oboe to wipe its crying eyes
when I had seen for myself Eliot’s handful of dust
not unlike Millet’s shepherds warming themselves
with their backs to the sun on the last warm day of Autumn
when trust came in guns loaded by uniforms of the same color
while all the pretty girls sang Le Vie en Rose
when the world around me was charred and
wisdom became choosing the words of our fathers instead of a fire escape
when morning’s vision of pig-tailed romances
played out on the sidewalks of White neighborhoods
gave way to Evening friends hiding in plain sight
turning away from me as if I had lost a leg
or a friend
on the day I discovered that no one sang like you anymore and
that war was best fought as a chorus of one in an army of many
I etched in stone the exact day and time that I would sadly
gently and with anonymity give away my only copy of
Le Vie En Rose. 03/11/2012 Posted on 03/12/2012 Copyright © 2025 Dan Kasten
Member Comments on this Poem |
Posted by Elizabeth Jill on 03/16/12 at 01:56 PM Now -this is the way to write about loss.
Your writing is so honestly presented from the protagonist's shoes that it hurts to read it. That's one reason I love it.
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