Chambéry, Haute Savoie

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David Cooke: Five Poems

AN ANNIVERSARY

Famous only for Rousseau’s dreamy sojourn,
Chambéry lay huddled at the foot
of its calendar landscape, and there it was
we met, as if compelled
by a pattern in the lines on a map
to inhabit that region of mountains.

I wonder now do you still recall
our romantic isolation; how we grew familiar
with narrow streets so reticent and formal,
kept tidy as their own concerns;
cramped shops replete with goods
for a bustling clientele.

All that legendary summer we spent
our afternoons on the slopes
of St. Michel, making love
in a shimmering absence –
with only the insects adrift in silence,
and the gliders above at a decent height.

BISTRO

Crossing the road for a bar, we dance
through the headlights of cars.
I open the door and the cold ignites,
your face aglow as laughing
we break a silence.

In the yellow light inside,
the shiftless gather to decipher
life on a screen. Sitting down,
we order hot wine and a grog.
The patronne turns,
too sour to spare us a word.

When our drinks arrive
we sip at warmth from spoons.
Across a glaze of desert light
your face is a flood of smiles.

ROUTE NATIONALE

The heat that summer oppressed us
as day after day we travelled along
a flat unbending road; and bleak utilities
hemmed it in all that dragging section.
Past petrol pumps and hangars
that were candy-striped, ablaze,
and compounds packed with tractors,
it urged us on to town.

The road was a scar on clean
terrain. Further off, beyond
slopes of pampered vines,
the mountains, white-capped,
soothing, were coolness glimpsed
through the gauze of distance.

JACOB-BELLECOMBETTE

Up here at a height, where
you see surrounding mountains,
I’ll forget my illness and the arcaded
streets below. Beyond the level
of roofs, the cross on Nivolet
is pinning rock and air, while fresh light
this morning, here before its season,
scours each jutting face to a rarer
tint of white. Refining the mass
of outcrop, it shrinks bulk
to an image; and leaves chill air
with all distinctions neat.

THE 2CV

The first car we owned was a 2CV
with no certifiable history.
The year we got together
we drove it to the end of its days.
With its tinny dinted roof
it had an air of slumped defeat
we rose above quite easily.

When summer broke all records
the windows that didn’t quite close
were an unexpected bonus.
Its mind-boggling gear stick
seemed set to leave its socket;
the functional dashboard
as neat as an early Avro’s.

Our one encounter with the law
–a strapped and booted gendarme –
required a shameless display
of fawning franglais.
A set of bulbs and a red triangle
raised its status to legal.

On days off our alpine ascents
were a puttering epic;
each free-falling return
a foot-to-the-floor held note
of whinging metal.

It was sheer foolhardiness
I hear you say to make such journeys
in a such a bagnole and I of course
can see you are right –
as always, I can only agree.

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