PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, PARIS

My son David made this photograph earlier this month on a visit to Paris. I was so taken by it in both color and in black and white that I asked his permission to use it in my Blog. "Concorde" is a word whose meanings include "agreement between persons, groups, nations; concurrence in attitudes, feelings; unanimity; accord; mutual fitness; harmony; peace; amity, and harmonious combination of tones; a chord needing no resolution... During the Revolution, this was a "place de revolution" rather than a "place de concorde." It actually had the name "Place de Revolution." It was right here that many of the 2,780 beheaded during the Revolution lost their bodies. The guillotine sat on this square. There is a bronze plaque in the ground in front of the obelish on the exact spot where Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Georges Danton, Charlotte Corday and Maximilien de Robespierre, among many others, were made "a foot shorter on top." Charles X, brother of the executed Louis XVI, honored those executed by installing the 3,300-year-old, 72-foot, 220-ton, red granite, hieroglyphic-inscribed obelisk of Luxor.

The photograph is David's; the poem is mine. I thought they somehow fit together.

PROCESSED REALITY

Now as for reality,
It’s true you’re going to get it;
Everybody does, usually without apologies.
Almost all of it comes processed,
And you usually can’t have it the way you want it;
Life isn’t a short order situation.

Some like it straight;
Fewer on the rocks or with a twist.
There may be penalties for stating your preference.
The trick is to look ahead
And try to figure out how you’re going to get it
And make yourself believe that’s the way you like it.