Beheaded in Paris, you continued to preach,
walking six miles before dropping your crown.
Keep us upright as we lumber blindly from bed,
walk on needles in search of medicine.
Like you, we hold our heads in our hands
as the world spins. Where is the path?
Patron Saint of Paris, you are a French ghetto now,
a mosaic of misery and chic stores. Your people
are not considered Parisian enough. In your medieval
heart they thump about, immigrants choked off.
Obstructed, they circulate amongst themselves;
oxygen grows poorer. Mosques and temples throb.
We twitch at the slightest movement.
Eyes squint, squatters steep like tea, dunked
in France’s failure to welcome the stranger.
Root cellars—once lined with rampion
and rutabaga, cabbage and kohlrabi—
swell with fear and weapons.
Come, fill our cellars with pork and no pork.
Let veil and no veil rest side by side.
See us through these harsh winters.
Even as we turn away
from our neighbours,
help us yearn for light.
Note: Not much is known about Saint Denis of Paris other than that he was the first bishop of Paris and was beheaded (around c. 250) in an area of France now called Saint-Denis. After he was martyred, a number of accounts say that his body was thrown in the river, fished out later by his followers, and buried. Obviously, this conflicts with the legend that he carried his decapitated head for six miles before falling to the ground.
