Notre-Dame
In Paris, where the Seine’s dark tide reflects a fractured moon,
The city weeps, in shadows wide, beneath a starless swoon.
Her boulevards, once bright with mirth, now echo grief’s low knell,
Each cobblestone a tale of dearth, where broken dreams do dwell.
The gaslights flicker, dim and wan, like souls that cannot rest,
Their amber glow a fading span, upon the city’s breast.
In Montmartre’s lanes, where artists bled their hearts in paint and rhyme,
The specters drift, their voices dead, entombed in silent time.
O Notre-Dame, thy gargoyles glare, with eyes of stone and woe,
Thy spires pierce the fog-drenched air, where lost loves softly go.
The bells, they toll, a mournful dirge, for those who war did claim,
Their names, a wound that none can purge, in Paris’ heart of flame.
By Pont Neuf’s arch, where lovers vowed beneath the chestnut’s shade,
A widow walks, her head unbowed, yet cloaked in sorrow’s braid.
Her lover’s laugh, now but a sigh, is carried on the breeze,
A phantom song that will not die, amidst the autumn’s frieze.
The cafés, hushed, with empty chairs, where absinthe once did flow,
Hold ghosts of poets, unawares, who drowned in long-ago.
Their verses, scrawled on napkins torn, are scattered by the wind,
Each word a thorn, each hope forlorn, where joy and grief are twinned.
In Père Lachaise, where ivy crawls o’er tombs of weathered gray,
The dead repose, yet Paris calls, their spirits to obey.
The mist enfolds each marble bier, with whispers cold and strange,
Of loves undone, of unspoken fear, that time cannot estrange.
O cruel city, thy beauty stings, with memories that burn,
Thy gilded halls, thy broken wings, no solace can return.
The Seine flows on, a sable vein, through Paris’ heart of stone,
Its waters bear eternal pain, where none may weep alone.
Let night descend, let shadows reign, let silence cloak the spire,
No dawn shall heal this deep refrain, nor quench the heart’s desire.
In Paris, where the past endures, her ghosts forever roam,
Their tears, like rain, her soul immures, in twilight’s endless home.
