Crossed Paths
Travel the streets of Paris, with ‘all i need is a chair, my red piano, and’ by Christine Leviczky Riek, first runner-up in our 2018 Magpie Award for Poetry.
In search of an uncle she never met, the poet created this poem as her exploration of crossed paths, unknown connections, parallel lives, missed chances. The form is Christine’s interpretation of an Alexandrine sonnet, inspired by Lajos Galánffy, a poet ancestor who worked in Hungarian.
Here’s what final judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar had to say about the piece: “I enjoyed the dense construction, which leads reader into the world of the poem, telling a story of loss and longing, using repetition of key phrases and a great evocation of a particular time and place.”
Enjoy the poem in its entirety, here from Issue 20, Autumn 2018.
all i need is a chair, my red piano, and
out there above the window red berries on the
spotted laurel dappling shade on the yard walkway’s
scored space, blank space with four minor flats in Chopin’s
ballade number four and soon I’m walking from that
old hotel to buy some grapes on saint dominique
eighty metres mostly flat, in their brown paper
bag stamped red and green, my uncle to cimetière
five hundred and fifty steps, yet we never met
there at père lachaise; my chair is on an april
train with my eurail youthpass, my old body sat
in this new world, my heart lost in that old one, and
on the road to fontainebleau I find my uncle
buried in a pauper’s grave, the train leaves every
thirty minutes though Chopin plays a lifetime in
twelve and all I can manage is to pay twelve francs
for a thirty-minute bath at gare de lyon
stroll three kilometres on the sidewalk past the
passage de folie, the rue du repos to reach
the chemin vert, where my uncle once lived, along
the dappled green path outside my basement window
For more from Issue 20, Autumn 2018 (ON SALE now!), pick up your copy today.
Poets, for your chance to appear in the magazine — and win $300! — enter the Kingfisher Poetry Prize, open now!
Christine Leviczky Riek is a poet and photographer from Surrey, BC. Visit Christine at christineleviczkyriek.com.
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