Apoplectic audiences on the
subastral levels of merchants,
ambulating about the rain-slicked
moss in dream-paradise square:
the sweet shop's candy-striped awning
is wearing down its cotton candy pink
and bruised darling purple unknowingly
in the darting drops.

                                How would you say
the shoppes of France in apartment hideaways
are fairing well with their storages of
novelettas and Hugo plays, pencils claiming
the one-inch border frame between text
and smoothly worn edges with recluse sighs and
determinations?

                          My apologies, monsieur,
for I lack a romantic tongue: brief
and terse visits as mine have chewed
the English into me, though interest pervades
from glazing the beautiful letters with my eyes
most nights back at home.