antique light

one spring day a celestial beam found its way into the dome of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis...
ethereal faces lifted towards the nostalgic light where the spirits of kings and cardinals converge...
Madame de Sévigné silently slipped into her chair, a dark veil hiding her delicate face...
she prayed for her forebears and her progeny and for her charmed ascendancy in the Marais...

antique ghosts

sometimes they hover behind window panes in the darkened chambers of private needs...
sometimes they drift across your field of vision then vaporize into the fading light...
sometimes they loom before you like peripheral gods from the antique mists...
and sometimes they enslave you in their stony embrace and engraved kiss...

of kings and lost lizards

a short distance away from the extreme sculptural opulence of the Pont Alexandre III, a golden salamander bask alone in the sunshine...
in search of the king who had once held it in such high regard to symbolize the mandate of his reign "nutrisco et extinguo"*...

[*"nourish the good and extinguish the bad" - vive la France!]

of kings and old clochards

strung out along the Pont-Neuf  like so many pulled teeth dangling on a chain, these grotesque pearls grimace and glare at the sanitized masses...
they finally found the head of the gallant Henri IV, embalmed and unjuggled, who once crossed over this bridge of vice beaming the glories of France...