THE SEINE

The Seine, at Paris, is more than beautiful. Poets and neo-impressionists shift their attention to it as the mood strikes. But it is also the main character in the lives of eight million people. Three-quarters of Parisians’ drinking water comes from the river. And a lot of their industrial poison and raw sewage empties into it. You do not have to jump off a bridge to commit suicide, one engineer observed. The backstroke is enough.

—MORT ROSENBLUM, The Secret Life of the Seine

I could spend my whole life
Watching the Seine flow by …
It is a poem of Paris.

—BLAISE CENDRARS