I Dreamed That in a City Dark as Paris

By Louis Simpson 1923–2012 Louis Simpson

I dreamed that in a city dark as Paris

I stood alone in a deserted square.

The night was trembling with a violet

Expectancy. At the far edge it moved

And rumbled; on that flickering horizon

The guns were pumping color in the sky.

There was the Front. But I was lonely here,

Left behind, abandoned by the army.

The empty city and the empty square

Was my inhabitation, my unrest.

The helmet with its vestige of a crest,

The rifle in my hands, long out of date,

The belt I wore, the trailing overcoat

And hobnail boots, were those of a poilu.

I was the man, as awkward as a bear.

Over the rooftops where cathedrals loomed

In speaking majesty, two aeroplanes

Forlorn as birds, appeared. Then growing large,

The German Taube and the Nieuport Scout,

They chased each other tumbling through the sky,

Till one streamed down on fire to the earth.

These wars have been so great, they are forgotten

Like the Egyptian dynasts. My confrere

In whose thick boots I stood, were you amazed

To wander through my brain four decades later

As I have wandered in a dream through yours?

The violence of waking life disrupts

The order of our death. Strange dreams occur,

For dreams are licensed as they never were.

Louis Simpson, “I Dreamed that in a City Dark as Paris” from The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001. Copyright © 2003 by Louis Simpson. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: Collected Poems (BOA Editions Ltd., 1988)

Biography

Poet, editor, translator, and critic Louis Simpson was born in 1923, in Jamaica, to Scottish and Russian parents. A contemporary of Confessional poets like Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath, Simpson’s early work followed a familiar arc. In the New York Times Book Review, critic David Orr noted its highlights: “Simpson has followed a path lined with signposts sunk so deep in our nation's poetic terra firma that . . .

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