The Bosnian woman licks her chops
when she sees me;
not emaciated yet, but wrapped
beneath handkerchiefs and
a fine-woven shawl;
and me, in my knee-stretching coat, under
a cold arch of Louvre -
where Kings forced mistresses in corridors,
and godly men scraped manure from their boots;
and gobbed out of windows onto the aching crowd.
The fountain nozzles - clotted with ice like a
mandrakes from a corpse -
glaze the black marble rim; the pool,
frozen in its brimming, soaks
the arses of the weak-legged and the foreign.

A baby, too, she clings at, this woman.
And proffers like a man at market thrusts fruit;
making sure the face is filled by the
dregs of winter smoke
blown from her mouth.
Just a quiet lump of cloth under
400 year palatial stone,
she appears,
and a callused palm, out-reaching.

And because she’s just a lump,
Americans wrapped in fur, they do not stoop.
The Japanese do not bend.
But I stop - perhaps only because they do not;
rummage my pocket for coins
and find none. Pull out some notes instead,
give her one, and leave.

She’s up and racing after me.
“Give me more” she says, shoving the baby,
No.
“Bosnia - I - give more” and grabs my hand,
kissing it, by the arches of a palace.
No.
“Please -”
No.

But she follows.
I open up my hand to see what’s left.
Two notes.
She reaches out to grab them but I whip
my hand away.
Fucking Christ, I say.
“Bosnia” she says again.
And embarrassed, I give her one.

She points still to the last one in my hand.
“Give me.”
No.
“Give me - Bosnia!”
No.
And as she turns to leave,
she hits me in the arm, cursing under her breath
and returns to the arch,
placing her baby for display.
A lump, with a hand outstretched.

copyright,  © 2006 Moby Pomerance