THE FRENCH CAFE'

I thought I could forget that face Her honeyed voice and smile I wiped it out without a trace Have not seen it in a while But now and then upon the air I think I hear her still Repeated echoes we once shared That time just would not kill I thought that we should never meet As we once planned to do A French café on Maybe Street Before that last adieu But as I read today’s Le Monde Your face stares back at me The starlet of Le plas Gironde For anyone to see I thought we said it was the end Finality, est Morte` No more would we try to pretend As ardour went unsought We left as though we never met And neither one looked back Like Montague and Capulet A scene to drench in black I thought that I might close a door And banish you forever Discard the memory and old score Until the first of never But that was then and this is now On a table laid for one Your manifest returns but how? I was sure that you had gone The protocols of boy meets girl Laid waste the table round No more the venom on lips that curl A familiar returns its sound The smoke still hung upon the voice Unchallenged fires still burn The price once paid a void invoice Past lessons nothing learn Perhaps its time, maybe some fate That stalks a French café Or yet the cheque paid on the plate The last word left to say Some whim, caprice or twisted tort Brought you to me today And in few seconds time so short Though you had not been away That small Café` on Maybe Street In a time warp waits the snare The Place old lovers never meet Though each knows the other is there I thought you gone absolved and free To the ether of a mist Too late we meet too late we see That neither can resist.