One Poem by Jeanna Ní Ríordáin

 

People-watching in Paris

 

 

Couples holding hands & 

strolling by the Seine  

 

Chicly dressed Parisians 

going about their business 

 

Flâneurs & awestruck tourists 

sight-seeing & taking pictures 

 

Elegant grandes dames  

shopping with their poodles 

 

Students reading Sartre  

outside the cafés-philo 

 

Strikers out in force, 

starting revolutions  

 

Classical violinists playing 

on street corners 

 

Delighting passers-by 

With folk songs & sonatas 

 

Sax players playing jazz 

in the métro tunnels  

 

Blasting out some Rheinhardt 

For commuters at rush hour  

 

Booksellars & street vendors, 

Melancholic buskers 

 

Bohemians & gypsies,  

Poets, painters, dreamers.

Jeanna Ní Ríordáin is an Irish-language translator from West Cork, Ireland. Her work has been featured in Quarryman Literary Journal, Drawn to the Light Press, Cork Words 3, New Isles Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Swerve, Black Nore Review, Reverie Magazine, Burrow, and Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal among others.