The Coffee Shop became a problem for the Town Hall
When everyone started arriving in automobiles.
In front of these parked cars Eric declared,
"Al Fresco means 'at the freshness'
No one comes here to breathe fumes, get it?
Build me a carpark further on down the road!"
The imperative tone, the urgency of his plea,
The truth in the voice, the elegance of common sense
Prevailed right through this Parisian quarter
And the new carpark was opened in the year
That a child was born to Eric and Faye.
They named him Craig Paynter Stanislavski.
Faye Paynter was mostly out of work.
She was good at both writing and acting.
One day at the Coffee Shop, she was dreaming
When she heard, "You should write screenplays!"
Then she heard bells ringing, line after line,
A veritable flooding of eloquent verse.
Such she thought was the difference
Between sea and shore, the transparent boundaries
That separate the hard and the soft in liquid air
Between the sheets, nakedly suffuse in
The act of creation, painted on the sky
Rising from the font of the verdant flowing sap.
Clive Harness, the editor of Bacina Press,
The foremost literary journal in Manhattan,
Crossed the bridge daily to come and sit inside.
In the smoky atmosphere he recalled with melancholy
A sweet moment in his past sitting with a lady
Somewhat like Faye but much less in love.
