The Paris Poems: "Pont de l'Alma"

© Karen Hathaway Pittman 2006

In Memory of Princess Diana

You dissolved in the dead of August, eaten alive
by this dread, descending tunnel: you went in . . .
and never came out again.
But we keep looking for you on the other side . . . .

Hapless passenger, what happened?
After your love summer of ocean and sky,
the black tar kissed you goodbye.
(We swore we heard you sigh . . . . )

And so now, Diana, the golden flame
lights up the sky,
here at Pont de l'Alma, in your name,
and for your sake and ours we bring you
our tattered burthen. We lay them down –
these, the scattered pieces of our broken hearts: here
a bleeding note, there
a fractured rose, and deep down . . .
a shattered jewel rusting like a crown.

Princess of loneliness, you left us alone
and lonely like you, stranded
by the side of this dead-end road, empty-handed,
with nothing for our decaying hands to do
to observe these eternal hours without you
but strew our fraying flowers
and scribble illegible elegies
on the top of this concrete wall . . .
keeping us from you.

Holy mother, what could you do?
At the end, whose name did you call?

Across the water, the iron tower
stiffens her sparkling spine.

Sacred Lady, where did you go?
I stand on this bridge and stare down below,
praying for some sort of sign.
Notre dame! – your people flock to your final shrine.

Karen Hathaway Pittman is an award-winning poet who is currently compiling her first book-length collection of poems, The Awful Colossus of Longing.