DOUBLE CHAI on 10.21.05
by Paul Siegell
Along with “—HE HONORED LIFE—”,
his horizontal headstone reads, “TI JEAN”.
Have y’ever visited Lowell, Massachusetts? Or,
anyplace Franco- or French-? Montreal at least?
Commemorating
the Battle of Trocadéro of August 31st, 1823—
(surprisingly Kyle’s birthday) the battle that,
“when Charles X’s French troops took a liberal
Spanish citadel on the southern Bay of Cádiz,”
restored the autocratic
Spanish Bourbon Ferdinand to the throne of Spain—
the French, in 1877, ornately rechristened
the square across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower,
the “Place du Trocadéro.”—
Trocadéro also meaning
emporium or place of trade.
There’s a great shot of it
looking from atop the Eiffel on the Internet.
Have y’ever strolled the pages of Paris? Or,
at least explored the Wikipedia Web site?
In Philadelphia this afternoon, on this
36th deathday of Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac,
my beautiful best friends & I are gearing up
to see the Yonder Mountain String Band
pick the Trocadero Theatre on 10th & Arch apart—
Our first toast is to his road.
Our second, to his word roads.
Our third, to yonder.