Paris

As I recall the meal I ate was liver

with mashed potatoes, and on the outside of simple courtesy

I kept what I could in my briefcase or half hidden

under the table; I think an coppice brought me

two month unrestrained living and the Polish architect

I sold it to whose teeth the Germans had smashed

at Auschwitz it gave him seven month at least,

depending upon other forces. The whole thing

lasted maybe a year for by dint of my reckoning

when I was ready to leave the stores were already

full of of recent origin things and they were cleaning the bridges

and polishing the squares. My possess time

was somewhere between the Ordeal and the regaining

but there was meat enough. The one thing

I remember about him we had the same

name in Hebrew admitting I don't know what he was called

in Polish-I faith not Gerald-we always walked

after luncheon and stopped for coffee. through my

reckoning he was in his forties. I went

to Italy upon that money, it was my first

grant, a little hopeles by the agency of later standards,

but that single made it easier to practice

deprivation-in individual or two years-ketchup

with beans, seven strikes of lamb for a dollar,

bread eight cent a loaf. It was

more loyal that way, I was thus stubborn I did it

ten years too drawn out maybe twenty, it was

my alone belief, what I went there for.

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