Seulement dans le Vieux Carré
by Marie Marshall
Decatur St., New Orleans, by Russell Lee.
Seulement dans le Vieux Carré
Seulement dans le Vieux Carré
tombe mon coeur au trottoir,
là-bas où les maqueraux crient
“Hé, chère!”.
Il me faut regarder de nouveau,
peut-être avec les yeux
d’un oiseau de printemps,
douces, à la teinte parme;
ou comme les Acadiennes
pendant la semaine sainte…
En cheminant à la Rue Bourbon
– en plein soleil
ou à la tombée bruyante de la nuit –
je le ramasserai, mon coeur,
qui nage sur
un flot de jazz…
et ça suffit pour vivre.
Only in the Quarter
does my heart fall to the sidewalk –
down there, where the pimps call out
“Hey, honey!”
I need to take another look,
maybe with the eyes of a spring bird,
soft, violet-hued;
Or like the Cajun girls
at Easter time…
Making my way along Bourbon Street
– in full sunlight,
or around clamorous nightfall –
I’ll pick it up, my heart
that’s floating on
a tide of jazz…
and that’ll do to live on.
interesting you didn’t include “old” in the quarter.
at the risk of sounding like a tourist brochure,
it makes sense, to me anyway since places in america never seem old.
even mastodons as suv’s rumbling down the avenue.
or maybe old is never said in new orleans and neither is square
like people calling san francisco “the city.”
that still irks me in a center of the universe kind of way
as if gilroy, california was just chopped liver.
they grow a lot of garlic in gilroy.
Seriously, no one I know from round there calls it anything but ‘The Quarter’.
dac
absolutely…this is a great poem..floating on a tide of jazz is a terrific line.