The new world doesn’t scare her. She preferred the old one,
looking out the window, the stagecoach from Caen
jostling
big carts, little carts; strawberries stacked
up like tombstones, wilting
in the hot July air

blue, red, white of the market
the berries
winking in the ribbons of homemade cockades.
She fingers hers
as if fingering berries; wrinkled
putrid, already rotting in the heat.

Blue, red, white, blue, red, white—
Paris swims in a world around her.
Powdered wigs and close-cropped hair and
everywhere, the angry shouts,
blue of the sky, blue of the pretend Seine, white of the white clouds stained

red. Red, red, red
red of the berries, red of the rouged cheeks, red of the real Seine
pink
from the slaughterhouse upriver but
dark from the jolly barbershop that
the carriage skirts, her knife steady, on
the way to see Jean-Paul Marat—

Yes, she preferred that world.
Better she not see
this one
now—