| 3am: three dozen or so friends we’d met hours ago
|
| Filled a bar to capacity
|
| You’d learned school French for a year
|
| Ordered 36 beers
|
| We all cheered your audacity
|
| Asleep on the cubicle floor
|
| We all tried the door
|
| And assumed it was some fumbling junkie
|
| Well, you had gone missing before for an hour or more
|
| So it just hadn’t sunk in
|
| If I knew then what I knew ten hours later
|
| I would have waited
|
| Bleary-eyed, freezing and shocked as they unscrewed the lock
|
| You slurred «merci» then mercy
|
| Kicked through the picturesque rain to the edge of the Seine
|
| No one knew where you were
|
| See, if I knew then what I knew ten hours later
|
| I would have waited
|
| Broken ribs hurt when you walk
|
| Red chalk on wet café blackboards
|
| Taxis slow and then go
|
| Their red eyes looking back at you stumbling
|
| You missed the bus, we lost touch
|
| You don’t talk to me much
|
| When you do it’s with kindness
|
| The last time we met there were tears
|
| You said «Mate, it’s been years
|
| Can we leave this behind us?»
|
| But I knew then what I know ten years later
|
| I should have waited
|
| Oh, the details don’t matter
|
| It was such-and-such plaza
|
| Some avenue, maybe
|
| Rue something? |
| Rue something |