Homeless, Paris

17 November 2015

On the Train from Arles A blind man and his wife and dog have seats across the aisle. He doesn't see the fatigue in her face. She is his antonym — petite, where he is strong and tall; dark, versus his fair good looks; his eyes protected by dark lenses, whereas hers are bare; her features worn by time and care, while his are young and clear. The little dog peers anxiously when they briefly disappear. He fondles it throughout the journey: vision is a tactile sense. She sleeps, slumped on the fold-down tray. When she wakes, they speak in low tones no one else can eavesdrop on. Their mirth is intimate, prolonged. Homeless, Paris I leave the airport shuttle at La Place de la Chappelle, fresh slush spattering my bags dragged along the rough trottoir where men in drab clothes swarm and throng, emanate a seething hum somewhere on a scale between chagrin and hopelessness. Lone men stand at street corners, look on with apathetic eyes, shabby men from everywhere and nowhere, and beyond. Their tattered, mud-stained tents are massed beneath the overpass, misshapen globes the varicose, bruised colour of unhealthy veins. They make me think of tulip bulbs, caught between the seasons' change — too late for summer's plenitude, too early for the spring. Renoir's Garden 12 rue Cortot, Montmartre From two hives painted rich gamboge in what remains of the old copse, to cherry trees in blossom flock the spring cohorts of bees. Artists in their own right, they select the flowers carefully — pollenators by profession, delicately hovering, choosing in accordance with arcana known to them alone, beneath a sky infused with possibility in shades of blue, that would have lured the painter and his palette to spring's vernissage — a master of the evanescent, present at awakenings; his workmanship meticulous, deft as that of bees. The tiny, toiling alchemists harvest dust they will transform to liquid gold ambrosia, sustenance for queens; the food of gods, whose formula can energise bees' flagging wings, intimate with flora as no painter has yet been. The painter's revelation works through light and shade on surfaces, whereas the bees decipher codes of fragrances and essences ...

Jena Woodhouse's poems have twice been shortlisted for the Montreal Prize. In early 2015 she was awarded a residency at Camac Centre d'Art, Marnay-sur-Seine, France.

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Homeless, Paris

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