Three Love Poems by a Native

        by Maxine Cassin

                      I.    New Orleans

         You have to be almost on top of the Mart
         to know it's really a crescent
         even though all your life
         you have never understood
         how parallels become perpendicular
         and streets that run for miles without meeting
         suddenly encounter each other at their far reaches.
 

                       II.     Bastille Day

What we do when the fanfare ends? _-
when the last of the musicians
is bathing his feet in the fountain
and the tuba lies abandoned in the grass
dull and mute.
The band drifts across the square
in pursuit of tones
that rise above the cathedral
and disappear.
The French horn clamors for wine
in a darkened corridor
beside the Presbytere.

            III.  Jazz Funeral

As they cut the body loose
he whose footsteps falter
can no longer keep time
to the staccato rain
or the umbrellas tarantella.
Our pulse is the drumbeat:
the brass band -- the sun --
in this city that plans
all its celebrations
under the sky,
taunting Jupiter.