Homeless on Ste-Catherine Street
Homeless on Ste-Catherine Street.
It’s early evening. Men wrapped in sleeping
bags, urban caterpillars, still on the sidewalk
around the corner from Cinemania, festival
de films francophone. The best of francophone
cinema.
The Imperial Cinema, home to Cinemania,
has been renovated and restored to what would
now be its ancient glory. The washrooms,
(bathrooms in the U.S.) are , however, modern,
with tres artistic faucets, muted lighting,
and a genteel ambiance. Peeing in such
surroundings is magnifique.
I’m here with my girlfriend, a.k.a.,
significant other, partner, or whomIdonotknowwhattocall,
watching Gerard Depardieu in Quand J’etais Chanteur,
(“The Singer”). Gerard plays a small town crooner
who falls in love with a younger woman.
The venues are discotheques and senior citizen homes;
a metaphor for the life that most of us are destined to live.
Somehow, to its credit, the movie comes off light despite
a fairly depressing theme.
Leaving the theater and returning to my car,
I see the same itinerant men, at the same location,
in their same positions, as when I saw them earlier
in the evening. Only now it is night, a November,
Montreal night, the wind coming up Ste-Catherine
Street like a two-fisted pug, the storefronts electric,
the traffic alive and desperate. I’m here with Gerard,
in a smoke filled dance hall, backup singers in place,
band poised to play, my microphone in hand, ready
to sing all the French love songs that I never knew existed.
And sing, like a Yankee gigolo in a Paris café.
(The Dalhousie Review)
