trout

Descendre de

from 7 Little Parisian Poems

Elizabeth Smither

That useful and strange verb: to get down
from a horse, to go down a street that slopes
and now a method: descendre de
clouds, spires, the grand place, the gilt-
gleaming statues, the fountain with nymphs
that pulses every second with a fresh plume
to shop signs, windows – each a small world –
to cobblestones, small dogs, leaves in gutters, turds.