Two Poems by Jeanna Ní Ríordáin

 

Golden Age Thinking

 

I wish I could go back

to Roaring Twenties Paris –

 

Ebullient & après-guerre,

Vibrant, dapper, debonair –

 

I’d wear flapper dresses & a slick neat bob,

I’d dance the Charleston & the Foxtrot

 

I’d spend my days in rive gauche cafés, 

brasseries & Stein’s salon

 

I’d rub shoulders with Picasso,

Matisse & Marc Chagall  

 

I’d attend the opera & ballet,

The Moulin Rouge & cabarets

 

I’d live it up with the Fitzgeralds,

James Joyce would be my drinking partner

 

There would be no thoughts of home,

past sorrows or the years to come

 

& there would never be a shortage

of brilliant stories or witty conversations,  

 

Or great friends, inspiration, absinthe 

 

*Inspired by an article in Vogue magazine

Paris in the Rain

There’s something cinematic

about Paris in the rain

 

The snug cafés

& cosy bookshops

 

The warm refuge

Of charming bistros

 

The glowing lights

& glistening puddles

 

The couples huddled

In street corners

 

The empty parks

& quiet gardens

 

The misty skies,

The vintage street lamps

 

The lovers sharing

An umbrella

 

Or stealing kisses

In the shadows

 

The fresh Spring showers,

The rain-drenched cobbles

 

The Eiffel Tower

Backlit by storm clouds

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.