Preface

A homeless man was living under the awning of the restaurant downstairs while it was closed during the fall Covid lockdown. He was one of those ageless fellows you sometimes see living on the street, with a scruffy beard and unruly salt-and-pepper hair that rose high over his ears. Could have been 40-years-old, could have been 70—couldn’t tell. I’d walk by him while leaving and entering my building, especially in the evening since he was often gone during the day, and furthermore I was in the habit of taking evening walks during that period. Bonsoir monsieur, I’d say on my way out. Bonne nuit, I’d say on return. I tried several times to engage a bit of conversation—asking him how he was doing or if he’d eaten that evening—but in response he just half-smiled, half-nodded. I guessed he didn’t understand French. Perhaps it’s better that way. I mean, how friendly do you want to get with someone living on the street?

I can’t imagine what it’s like to walk a mile in his shoes, but he wore a pair of old sneakers that didn’t look to be holding up too well as the autumn damp took hold, so I took him down an old pair of shoes that I should have gotten rid of long ago. He just sort of looked at me and nodded when I set them down beside him. He didn’t try them on in front of me, just nodded.

The next day he was wearing them.

He never looked at me as though he was asking for anything. Thankfully. Anyway, I’m sure there are organizations that provide clothing for the homeless. He actually had a nice fall jacket, grey with fur-like lining. It looked warm enough in mid-November. Nevertheless, I also took him some socks, some underwear, a couple of pair of old pants and a few t-shirts. We’ve all got too many t-shirts. He was smaller than I am but not by much; I figured they’d fit. Nothing special. Honestly, I am not a generous guy, but there he was, and I had some stuff… You know how it is, right? He never said anything when I brought him these things, just a kind of a nodding greeting or maybe thanks, a slight mumble, a sort of nmmn.

He slept on an old mattress placed on top of lots of cardboard to keep the mattress dry, and he used other big sheets of cardboard as a blanket. The cardboard had images of bicycles on it because bike shops were receiving lots of them in preparation for Christmas sales.

In late November the weather turned colder and damper. I had an old tattered blanket in the closet, so I took it down one afternoon. I left it for him between the mattress and the cardboards. Just an old blanket—I hadn’t used it in years.

He also had a little three-legged stool that I’d see him sitting on some evenings. He’d sit there eating dinner that an association for the homeless brought by or that he’d brought back from the make-shift soup kitchen up the road. And here’s something curious: Sometimes, late in the evening, I’d look out the window and see him sitting on his stool just beyond the edge of the awning, in the light of the streetlamp, writing in a notebook. Occasionally he’d be writing when I went out from my nighttime walk. I once asked him what he was writing (after all, I’m something of a writer myself) but he just nodded, mumbled a little nmmn, then sort of stared at me until I said good night and walked away. As I say, he didn’t seem to speak French.

People go to sleep so early these days, and I like writing at night myself, so I’d be up in my flat writing and the only other person I knew who was awake would be him, down on the sidewalk, writing in his notebook, just beneath the edge of the awning, in the light of the streetlamp. I felt a strange kind of communion. Like we were the only two people on earth to describe the world as we respectively knew it at that moment.

One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, when he was absent, I took down a notebook—I have plenty—and left it on the stool for him, along with a few pens. That’s pretty much it. End of story. It wasn’t as though we were buddies or anything.

But I do wonder where he’s gone. You see, he stopped sleeping there sometime during the past week. I don’t know when exactly because on December 15 we entered a new curfew period where you couldn’t be out without a valid reason from 8pm to 6am and my view of his dwelling space is blocked by the awning of the restaurant below. I didn’t see him at all during the day this past week, though that wasn’t unusual. I’d look out my window at night hoping to see him seated on his little stool beneath the light of the streetlamp, writing in his notebook. But he wasn’t there. This troubled me, and it kept me from working. For a few nights I went downstairs toward midnight to peek out the front door just to see if he’d returned—feeling a bit clandestine just stepping out onto the street—but he hadn’t. Could someone who lives on the street be subject to curfew? Maybe he’d been given a bed in a shelter. Or else he just moved on.

This evening I saw that all of the items that made up his dwelling area had been cleared away. The mattress was gone. The big cardboard sheets were gone. The three-legged stool was gone. The city clean-up crew must have taken everything away. Just a few scraps of cardboard remained on the ground along with a mask, an empty milk box, a plastic-wrapped sandwich….

Then I saw, peeking out between two pieces of cardboard, the notebook that I’d left for him earlier in December. The brown-beige cork-like cover of the notebook is the same color as the cardboard, so I guess the crew didn’t see it when they cleaned the area.

I picked it up and saw there was writing inside. So I brought it upstairs. I feel like a bit of a thief, to tell the truth, but apparently he isn’t coming back and eventually it would have gotten trashed if left outside. I can always give it back if I ever see him again. Inside there’s writing in all directions and in different types of characters: Latin, Greek, logograms, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and even some figures that look like Neolithic wall painting. And strangely enough, there are a few pages written in English. Imagine that: for the six weeks that he’d been there I’d been walking by him and saying a few words to him in French—Bonsoir monsieur, Comment allez-vous? Vous avez besoin de quelque chose? Vous avez mangé ce soir?—and it turns out that he speaks English, or at least writes in English. So while I was trying to speak to him in my second language, we could have communicated better if I’d used my first.

Among the pages in English, there’s a poem. It’s near the back of the notebook, unless it’s the front—depends on how you open  it, because it starts in one direction then you have to turn the notebook over to continue reading. It’s entitled On Winter Solstice Night… which is weird because this is December 21st, night of the winter solstice.

Here’s the poem I found:

On Winter Solstice Night

‘Twas the night of the Solstice, when all through the flat
Not a creature was stirring, not even the cat;

Cute, right? You recognize that? Riffing on a visit from Old Saint Nick. But it’s more than that. Better that I read it to you. Give a listen. Sit back. I’ll start again.

Audio – A Reading of On Winter Solstice Night, Author Unknown
Read by Gary Lee Kraut

Preface, audio, poem © 2020. All rights reserved.

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Sometimes, after a neighborhood walk during which we’ve peered in at gated parks and gardens, we return home and find ourselves grazing on poetry—well, some of us do. We brush by some texts, we shrug off others, we resist veering off to news and rumors on our phones. Increasingly we linger, first on one poem, then on another, until we sink into one and it engulfs us. We stay with it. We reread it. Have we understood it correctly? We contemplate its words and its lines and its entirety. If the poem is in French then we may translate it, if perhaps too literally at first, and work on it until we are satisfied with our day.

Renouveau (Renewal) by Stephane Mallarmé (1842-1898), written in 1862, published in 1866. Translation and photos by Gary Lee Kraut, March 22, 2020.

Renouveau

Le printemps maladif a chassé tristement
L’hiver, saison de l’art serein, l’hiver lucide,
Et, dans mon être à qui le sang morne préside
L’impuissance s’étire en un long bâillement.

Des crépuscules blancs tiédissent sous mon crâne
Qu’un cercle de fer serre ainsi qu’un vieux tombeau
Et triste, j’erre après un rêve vague et beau,
Par les champs où la sève immense se pavane

Puis je tombe énervé de parfums d’arbres, las,
Et creusant de ma face une fosse à mon rêve,
Mordant la terre chaude où poussent les lilas,

J’attends, en m’abîmant que mon ennui s’élève…
– Cependant l’Azur rit sur la haie et l’éveil
De tant d’oiseaux en fleur gazouillant au soleil.

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