Montreal

 

The sad untitled little love song that I will write for you

will be written on the pressed and crumpled butts of bus transfers,

and begotten in a fit of really pretty inspiration

in my seat on the service road.

            It's born at the back of the two-fourteen Southbound,

            into the laps of students and minorities.

           

Littered alongside a thousand little Tim’s cups,

always unfinished, it will try to hark back those twenty some-odd winks

you’ve given to me. It will sing

until the basilisk goes.

            Or until your diners and

            BellePros turn out and close.

 

Copies of your love song on sunny Dimanche days

are burning in the Park on thin Jamaican paper.

Or else being sung off the parchment

 of one of ten thousand of your churches.

            The nuns in their catacombs

            singing, and rolling by torches.

 

At night you blink at me those yellow-white and oranges

in lit apartment lights. My sad little love song will fill in the blanks

of that dance on your face. On your staircases;

On my knees to the Basilica loving you.

            The sound of the cheering Habs fans,

             in the sad spinning searchlight in the skyline above you.

 

And unbeknownst to them I am joined in my love song at Lionel-Groulx

by other commuters. And the pretty buskers.

The underground flowers blooming green orange

and blue. This is a great underground morning. It joins me in singing

            about my love, Montreal. McGill sings.

            The crack-addict sings. The Biodome penguins flapping their wings.

 

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Kirya Marchand is a twenty-year-old poet living in Montreal, and studying at McGill University. As a student of English Literature and Environmental Studies, she is also an amateur painter and a part-time waitress.