Weekly Poem: ‘Georgi Borrisov in Paris’

By John Balaban

The Slavic poet sips his morning vodka, his mind
as troubled as the river sliding down below
the 22nd floor of his apartment on the Seine
where a barge cuts the surface to thread Pont Mirabeau.

He knows that words are fading from books.
From poems of Pushkin, from Apollonaire’s,
from poems he wrote when talking in his dreams.
Words are disappearing, leaving pages bare.

Next door, an office complex bustles like a hive,
Its workers tending cells inside the glassed-in combs.
He stares into their cubicles. It sours his vodka.
Their tower has become…a heap of drying bones.

But what can poets do about the missing words, gone
even from those lips that longed to say them — like wishes
floating off above the river, like coins
tossed from barges, bridges, bateaux mouches?

Where else is this happening? Is it happening at home?
In a world reduced to billboards, he would be totally unnerved.
The strangely exiled poet has been drinking for ten days
but this has only sharpened his worry about the words…

John Balaban is the author of 12 books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won the Academy of American Poets’ Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection and two nominations for the National Book Award. He is poet-in-residence and professor of English at North Carolina State University. His most recent book is Path, Crooked Path” (2006, Copper Canyon Press).