Paris
  
 Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn?
 I watch the compass needle of your spire.
 Your glow flares and falls, and so I must mourn.
  
 I have walked beside you, consecrated urn,
 who anchors passions and banks human fire.
 Heart of the City of Light, how can you burn?
  
 My footsteps echoed inside you. I could discern
 your perfume distilled from fervent desire.
 Your glow flares and falls; your city must mourn.
  
 Stone Mother, Grey Lady, where shall we turn?                                                                         
 Our hearts are heavy with praise and useless ire.
 Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn?
  
 Could your serene blue gaze help us learn                                                                        
 to sing on despite this ruined choir?
 Your glow flares and falls, and all France must mourn.
  
 Our Eternal Lady, you shall return,
 but today we weep as you seem to expire.
 Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn?
 Your glow flares and falls, and the world must mourn.
  
  
 Leslie Schultz 

Like everyone, I am shocked and devasted by the sight of flames engulfing, yesterday, the gothic church of Notre-Dame de Paris. I was last there ten years ago, with my dear friend and my daughter, and I keep thinking about the contrast between the joy then and the great sadness now.

For me, a cri de coeur requires form to contain it. Perhaps that is why this poem came as a villanelle. Though any response I can make seems wholly inadequate, I offer this poem and these photographs, all taken on March 24, 2009. From the dawn-lit window of our small hotel to Sainte Chapelle, Pont Saint-Michel, the Seine, a small couscous restaurant on the Left Bank,–all were taken in the vicinity of Notre-Dame that happy day.