Monsieur Clermont

That August, in La France Profonde,
the frelons were out in force,
honey-gold cruisers of late summer air,

their poigniards sheathed. The heat
lapped at a sticky terrace table,
our observation post for village fictions —

Jean, his bench-saw snoring to the hornets,
a girl scraping her pans out to the hens,
that old man in his garden chair —

le petit vieux.