November 29, 2015Level 4: Brussels
The metro and the underground streetcars
are shut down, every station, the soccer
match cancelled, Johnny Hallyday’s songs
rescheduled for spring, because who can get there.
The authorities advise: shelter in place, and
the market held on Sundays is not this Sunday, brick
and mortar stores locked. A man in a big jacket
walks around the city with a bomb
beneath the cloth. Even he is anxious, or, maybe
he’s a ghost now. No one knows.
Three tourists photograph themselves
at the Grand Place, in front of soldiers, next to
a Christmas tree, because what else can tourists do,
but wend their way to a few bars that are defiantly
still open.
Each big jacket is a suspicion.
It’s November, the first snow flurrying; anyone out
is wearing a big jacket. Who will wrap the pretty gifts
piled into holiday displays? Who will eat the food
spoiling in the shut-tight bistros? Manneken Pis,
little bronze man, still pees in the fountain’s basin,
oblivious.
Maybe he’ll save the city again.
He can dress as the mayor in a fur-trimmed cloak.
Streets are sealed behind the Hôtel de Ville.
Hardly anyone is there to point and laugh at him.
from Poets Respond