Boulevard du Montparnasse, by MARY JO SALTER

Once, in a doorway in Paris, I saw

the most beautiful couple in the world.

They were each the single most beautiful thing in the

world.

She would have been sixteen, perhaps; he twenty.

Their skin was the same shade of black: like a shiny

Steinway.

And they stood there like the four-legged instrument

of a passion so grand one could barely imagine them

ever working, or eating, or reading a magazine.

Even they could hardly believe it.

Her hands gripped his belt loops, as they found each

other’s eyes,

because beauty like this must be held onto,

could easily run away on the power

of his long, lean thighs; or the tiny feet of her laughter.

I thought: now I will write a poem,

set in a doorway on the Boulevard du Montparnasse,

in which the brutishness of time

rates only a mention; I will say simply

that if either one should ever love another,

a greater beauty shall not be the cause.

From “Sunday Skaters” by Mary Jo Salter. (Knopf: $20.) 1994 Reprinted by permission.