Sandy Solomon: Beside Politics

As the train rattled towards Paris, she chatted along,

like me sixteen and traveling alone.

I knew to disapprove of pieds noirs, assasins

(scrawled on walls or yelled by angry crowds),

but then she described Algiers before the war,

her voice a puzzling mix: now fluting, now flat,

now edged, now frail. I can’t say what I miss…

a smell to the soil? the way the air holds light?  

.

I knew what side I was on (not hers), but sadness

seemed beyond sides. Needless, the thought 

hissed, our train slowing under choked northern 

skies.  As she leaned opposite me, against 

our window, an older face, faintly imposed, 

floated through gray, rain-soaked outskirts.

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Copyright 2022 Sandy Solomon

Sandy Solomon’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Vanderbilt.