Paris When I was in Paris, alone, before the war, To make ends meet, I played piano at the old Hotel d'Empire. The gaunt maitre d' helped her coat off at the door, And what had driven me from home at once came clear. She asked for "Night and Day". "For the same, in turn," I said. She had eyes like summer thunder, And lilac petals in her bed. Her family was Prussian--estates, a coat of arms-- And they had hoped a trip abroad might mend her father's failing health. For his part, he seemed...unimpressed with my rude charms. But love, like anything, seems richer plied in stealth. We'd meet in low cafes. We would meet along the Seine. But when Poland fell she told me That we could not meet again. So I consoled myself with music and philosophy And with egregious quantities of wine But when the German tanks rolled through the Arc de Triomphe I found something new to occupy my mind The information my confederates would bring me I'd encode as fake transcribed orchestral parts Which I'd bike out to the suburbs, waiting at the checkpoints With the cows and vegetable carts. Someone got careless or somebody was broken Half our cell vanished in a night I reached the countryside but never got back in the fight And you know the rest--how, at last, on Norman sands, Across a body trail, the Allies ran the German guns to ground. She stood at my door, bloodspray on her face and hands, And said that it would mean her life if she were found. But love is blind as justice, That love is doomed that starts to doubt. I called on friends and called in favors: They didn't like it, but they got her out. You say she bore secrets. Well, this I could not know. But if you're right, and if I had, I fear I would have done the same. You see, I still loved her, and whatever winds now blow, My only crime was love, and love my only shame. Carve these words below my name.