"The Room" another original poem by mepatriot.

Earlier this same year we had been in Paris for the first time, and this is based on viewing some of the older apartment buildings in the 19th-Century parts of the city. This is sort of my "Hunchback of Notre Dame" meets Dickens, however the time setting is somewhat indeterminate--late middle ages, I suppose, but possibly as late as the early 18th century. Bastions against the elements...is a phrase/ideal/meme that has always comforted and inspired me. Enjoy! (I hope.)

The Room

For me, the known world is no more than I can walk.
Sometimes, in the cafes, I'll listen as they talk,
Or eavesdrop 'long the Thiers at the border of my world,
In their hopes and fears is where my mind's unfurled.

And this city of lights...place of dreams, she haunts me.
Gorgeously ugly, and beyond hyperbole;
Piercing my soul and hot blood to the root,
Giving life, granting little-- a forbidden fruit.

Though her grandeur so fine infuses my being,
There's a place that transmutes beyond her eye seeing--
A one-room flat in the eaves of Montmatre,
At the top of my world, in the Place Du Tertre.

Here I am king of all I survey.
My lone eye on creation is but a small bay,
O'er the sink in my meager kitchen it sits,
My portal from a life that never commits.

Neither rich nor handsome, nor donned with the graces,
I commune with the world from my own little places.
I see them all pass, and I hear their lives going,
To venues I needn't, but am blessed in the knowing.

Give me some bread and my cheese and some wine,
Then show me gilt ballrooms and palaces sublime.
Nothing compares with simplicities I adore,
T'ween four short walls and this roughly-planked floor.

When winter storms come and the fire is hot,
My flat is a fortress and cheerful jackpot.
The ice and the winds can lash and can moan,
But nothing can threaten my sturdy ark home.

I curl 'neath the covers and candle me a book,
No fitter spot on Earth than this lone, sacred nook.
Since the winds are outside and-- ha! ha! --I am not,
No prince, czar, or king can equal my lot.

(At Amity, 12-18-16)