Snow-covered area in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, with the title "Hunger Is Good Discipline" and author name Michael Kim Roos written across the bottom.

Hunger Is Good Discipline

(Revised Feb. 2022)

Paris in December, iron clouds about to clash.
Your stories have been stolen, your pockets full of ash,
Your sentences lie comatose, like bodies in a morgue.
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

Up and down the boulevards, Raspail and Saint-Michel,
You wonder if you'll wander into Montparnasse or Hell.
You stop and gaze at Marshall Ney, who gestures with his sword.
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

It’s easy here to lose your way—Paris has no rules.
They tempt you with the opium, the absinthe, et les poules.
So many souls are in retreat from nightmares of the war.
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

Old men at a chessboard, beneath the barren trees,
Their faces wrapped in woolen scarves, their hands between their knees.
The bishop takes the faithless knight, the rook just bars the door.
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

Step inside le musée to speak with Paul Cezanne.
You ache to write the way he paints the landscapes of Provence.
“Il faut d’abord durer,” il dit, “comme la vieille Sainte-Victoire.”
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

Down on Rue de l'Odeon in Shakespeare's Company,
Sylvia smiles to see your face and offers you black tea,
The smell of books and candle wax and papers on the floor.
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

Pass by the roasted chestnuts, the mandarins and spice,
The cheeses and the long baguettes, don't think about them twice,
The plums, the apples, et les éclairs, croissants sold by the score.
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

You learned it all from Ezra, Gertrude, and Mark Twain,
Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Flaubert walk with you by the Seine.
It’s true that Joyce went starving here, Verlaine, Stendhal, George Moore. Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

So write you one true sentence, the truest that you know,
And once it’s settled on the page, on from there you go.
You know that you can do it. You did it once before.
Hunger is good discipline in Jardins du Luxembourg.  

Oct. 2020, Feb. 2022

Copyright © 2020 by Michael Kim Roos