The Taped Flowers ≈ Les fleurs scotchées ≈ 130 Street Photographs after the Paris Attacks {Paris Street Photo}
The Taped Flowers - Les fleurs scotchées - 54/130 © 2016 CHANT WAGNER
130 Street Photographs after the Paris Attacks - 130 photographies de rue, après les attentats de Paris - In Memoriam
Not even two months after the killings,
which transformed a restaurant into a morgue
The iron curtain was still down
almost non-stop, obstinately
Some people thought about
getting as close as possible
to the heart of the matter
If no one was there, anymore
If bon-vivants had died
over a restorative soup full of spice
Then, some signs could be left
of a passage and a thought
Flowers were taped to the iron curtain
Like bandages for the souls, gone and wandering
Those who wandered nearby - alive
Those who wandered unseen - elsewhere...
The bandages attempted to cover cold spots of hurt and emptiness
but also revealed the resilience of the spirit
The frailest of monuments,
A gesture, half-broken
A concern with lastingness and the ephemeral
A hope for a tomorrow
In the middle of a gray, blind wall of sadness
Hermetically shut
Life stuck
Rejecting the false prophecy of a no man's land, which had appeared overnight, randomly, absurdly, crazily, intolerably.
