"Merde!" the Kid said, glancing at a clock. "I've never cut it so fine before. Kisses, kisses!"
The embrace done, backpack on, she was leaping down the stairs last night, heading for her other home.
And back in 10 minutes.
"Forgotten something? Now you have missed your train."
"Métro's all closed," she gasped. "Somebody jumped in front of a train. I can't get to the station."
"I'll walk you there."
"I called Mum, she wants to bring the car and fetch me."
"That's kind of her."
"Why did they have to jump in front of my Métro?"
"It is a bit unseasonal," I said. "Normally, the suicides don't start again until February. After a batch in November."
"It's a horrible way to do it," said the Kid.
"Yes, it is."
"They were bringing something out on a stretcher. There were firemen, everybody."
"On this line, often they choose Gaîté" (one station further up), I told her.
"Gaiety! Oh ha-ha, Dad!"
"No, but it's true, love. I must have told you about the one I saw."
"No. Never. Do tell!" Ah, her current teenage taste for gore.
So I did, and she asked for details of carbonisation by electrocution, blackening and how the skin pulls back from the teeth in a death smile.
"Yuk! And you saw it?"
"Oh, yes."
"Wasn't it horrible?"
"The body really doesn't look much like a person any more."
"What did you do?"
"Helped people calm down the ones that were screaming, waited for the emergency services, and then walked to work."
"It's so selfish to do it in the Métro. Why don't they cut their wrists in the bath or something?"
"The ones I feel most sorry for are the train drivers who hit them. You see it coming and you can't stop. That must be really horrible."
"What kind of noise does it make?"
"That's enough."
The Kid's tale reminded me of another.
And also that half of my favourite poetry books are still piled on the floor, where they've been for three years while everybody argues about who's going to fix the hole in the roof that leaks rain on to my shelves, who's going to pay for it and when it should be done. Last I heard, it was early this month. Lunacy. Sending anybody up there on to wet sloping slates in January!
So many poems have been written about the Métro since Fulgence Bienvenüe's Line One opened on July 18, 1900, that many have been collected into an excellent anthology, 'Les Transports Poétiques,' by Bernard Lorraine (le cherche midi éditeur, 1994).
Extracted from something more substantial, here's one in English, though, about what the Métro public announcements speakers still rather coyly call an:
'Incident de voyageur'
Two hours in those tunnels
for nothing.
I’m disheartened. What use ?
Good for nothing !
I so much wanted to talk with her
of verse and ...
But gone, gone she was,
the wrong hour tolled,
heart fell apart
& that was called la floraison du mal.
I tried to set the clock back.
Clic-clac, speaker overhead.
« This is your driver speaking.
Please be patient for a few more moments,
the service is perturbed :
un incident de voyageur. »
Yes, you can say that again and it’s hot !
This sweat, the getting there...
will she show tolerance ?
What use am I here ?
Clic-clac, speaker overhead.
« This is your driver speaking. »
Already a quarter of an hour and old
people, standing, begin to ask for seats
from the young, heads between walkmans.
« You make me shit, old cow ! » one adolescent mutters
as he cedes his place & my thoughts
run free. Paris, city of light,
you’ve just seen it, my heart.
« ... line is blocked between Saint Lazare
& Brochant. » C’est brûlant ! Jesus, this !
Clear, a clochard,
Place de Clichy, undoubtedly.
Will she wait ?
Will she wait for me, so late !
Best foot, stop tapping, listen
instead to the astonished words
of the fat-assed American tourist
and his wife, who is crushing my
arm. Do we inform him where
he might get off, dear heart, squeezed
in bleak anticipation ? Or absurd,
do we let them stew, you and I ?
We shall be set forward ! When ?
Clic-clac, speaker overhead.
Is this our pilot speaking ?
Third time. Who does he think he is ?
We’re stuck! Where are the hostesses,
the plastic trays of horrible food ?
It’s bloody hot. Where are the wings
as they collect the remains
of the anonymous victim ?
Somebody’s dead.
She wasn’t even home.
Back underground again
at Etienne Marcel
to ride on to market - les Halles,
much changed, the cattle human now
in the glass & steel shopping forum
where drug-pushers ask « You want some ? »
I’m on a trip of my own,
the mind already blown.
She’s vanished. How smoothly we glide on
to Châtelet - long live small castles !
Task those who didn’t want a Channel tunnel
with just one sceptic question
about their sceptered isle : « Why ? »
Cité ; but no City of London.
By what irony does England demand
that the French train stops at Waterloo ?
Napoleon wanted a Chunnel.
England expects a lot today,
but not from me, Lord Admiral,
except in the estuary. Duty ?
Cité. My weeping heart, are you still there ?
The thought-police are based round here,
above our heads la préfecture.
Saint Michel. Cry pity !
Odéon. This is odious ;
not even half an hour,
& gone she was.
Odéon... Odéon. No explanation,
this driver kicks his heels in silence,
while his train is stalled on rubber wheels.
She let you down.
At Saint Germain, one revives
with blazing intent, after
that broiling where the theatre lies.
Germain is certainly germane.
Next stop is literature, Saint Sulpice.
If you please, no more wars !
Saint Placide.
O my heart, is that how you are ?
Montparnasse-Bienvenüe.
Welcome, Montparnasse !
We all get off,
toreadors ready for the corrida.
For me comes change : Gaîté, Pernety, Plaisance.
Imagine being gayous ! The names
are evocative despite lack of pertinence
& the corridors at Montparnasse
are very long. But I live across line 13,
the rumbling starts before dawn ;
& she, she is close to line 4.
That bygone muse whom still I adore.
Her line is a panoply of saints. I pray
to all of them, to others also, my gods,
am startled : « Heavens, what is that noise ? »
It’s the doors opening - whoosh !
Change trains. Directions. Bang !
« - Gaia, I thought her thighs parted...
- She departed.
Cette nuit te laisse voyageur? »
11:32:57 PM link 
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