Père Lachaise

There was a funny sweet smell there.

I hoped I didn't become ill

on that beautiful day.

Amidst the thousand

solid crowded markers

crypts, tombs, graves and monuments

so many toppled cenotaphs

cracked stones, open graves...

What better proof could you have

none of us is immortal?

Yet at Jim Morrison's grave

at least fifty people partied

as they have every day since his death.

The clink and roll of glass on dirt

a bottle kicked is music

from the murmuring crowd's edge.

And of course there is poetry

and a guy playing guitar & singing.

What do Jim, Isadora Duncan

Oscar Wilde & Sarah Bernhardt

all have in common ?

They're all pagans

pagans amongst the crosses.

Whitman McGowan