It is not the world which passes our long-legged, small table
outside the Cave d’Aristide where we have hoisted ourselves
to settle on the slightly too-high stools.
With my dark glasses and light air,
my T-shirt striped horizontally, the image I am striving for
is more faux Français than vrai Palavasien.
Irony! Somehow this village condones its ease.
No, it’s not ‘the world’, certainly not as literal
translation, but it’s more than fellow-tourists,
who are few despite the excellence
of the picpoul de pinet, the beach, the sunlight,
the exchange rate and the mussels.
This spot, right on the corner
of Rue Aristide Briand,
is perfect for remembering his victims:
Paul Boible, railway worker, before the court
in 1910 for carrying a prohibited weapon,
to wit a corkscrew, the thousands
who tore up their mobilisation orders
and mailed the scraps to Aristide, the Paris sparkies
done out of their jobs by soldiers.
Ah, Aristide, it was Emma Goldman
who countered your scream of ‘sabotage’ with,
‘Who but the most ordinary philistine will call that a crime?’
If there was a wine bar on some Rue Emma Goldman
somewhere, I’d be drinking there with the cheminots,
and Paul Boible would pull my cork.
But for now it’s Aristide, and the sun sets
as the shopkeepers’ kids play in the street
and I turn to my Mas de Daumas Gassac ’06
and ask myself how ordinary a philistine I am.
Aristide, you were the prototype
for Chifley, Blair, all the Social Democrats
who (let’s be kind) spun themselves into
contradiction. Were you, were any of them
aware of this? Here, on my stool,
(no armchair Marxist!) I can contemplate
not just the passing ‘life’, not just the wine,
but how my hedonism and my history
have put me here, my feet just off the pavement,
glad of not having to strike for five francs a day
and with the luxury of pretending to pretension.