In Vino Veritas

This street has existed since Neolithic times. This early morning photo does not show the transformation it undergoes at night when it becomes a bustling centre for Parisian university students.

The empty bottles

Cry, “In vino veritas!”

At my happiness

How many regrets, how many dreams have passed along the Rue Mouffetard?

Surely a way that has existed for thousands of years must absorb some of the joys, the sorrows of those who have walked it. The faint vibrations of a neolithic man’s footsteps in the dirt on the first journey down the hill, marking the path to be followed throughout history; the unspoken fears of the Romans on their way out into the wildernesses, or back to their marshy encampments on the  Île de la Cité; the fanaticism of the medieval pilgims on their way to mass; the hopes of the students of a thousand years, carousing in the bars and bistrots or fleeing back to their freezing garrets, their recent failures shattering their frozen dreams.

You can still buy your cheese and fruit in the market at the bottom of the street as people have done for thousands of years. Sometimes at night a band will strike up, and couples whirl about in the little market square. You lose sense of the individual in such a place. It becomes a ribbon of humanity, a time-transcending ribbon of life. Times and fashions may change but humanity in the Rue Mouffetard does not. It laughs, it cries, it stumbles in old age alone up the street with a piece of bread back to its simple lodging or it bursts in crowds down the street, overflowing with youthful exuberance and the wildest dreams.

I am part of that humanity whose small vibration on the ancient cobblestones has left a tiny resonance.

Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge: https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-61-tears-wine/

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