Symbol Sorting and Sign Language

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Et nos amours

Faut-il que je m’en souviens ?

La joie venait toujours après la peine.

-Apollinaire, “Le pont Mirabeau”

When I think of bridges, of love, of Paris, I cannot help but think of Apollinaire’s poem, “Le pont Mirabeau.” (Find it and a translation at the end of the post.)

The bridge itself, which links the 15^th to the 16^th arrondissement lies much further down the river than the Pont des Arts, which sits in the center, emanating out from the Louvre in the 1^st.

The poem is a bit of a break-up anthem, about layovers of the less lovely variety. About standing still in the space between yesterday and tomorrow for a little longer than you expected to. About knowing that things have begun to shift around you but wanting to fix yourself in the place where you had once been with your love and be still with the souvenir.

I imagine the speaker standing there on the bridge, remembering his beloved at a time when they were there together and the stillness came from the calm of shared things rather than inertia.

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face

Tandis que sous


Le pont de nos bras passe

Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

For him, in memories, love bridges the two of them, their arms arced, echoing the structure where they’d once stood.

It’s dark and broody and true. If I had tried to study it with my high schoolers when I taught World Literature, some tenth grader would have dismissed it as “so emo.” Maybe the one who slouched in his seat and regularly forgot his homework. Then, one of the girls would look out the window at something that wasn’t there, and return the next day with a few of Apollinaire’s verses written on her binder. Later, you’d remember they used to date. That one day, a couple months ago, she’d been very quiet, her eyes a little red.

There’s a refrain in the poem, a foregone conclusion that metes out the message:

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure.

The speaker seems stuck. Perhaps it is the first time he’s been back to the bridge without his chérie, before different memories could crowd out the current connotations. His mind loops back to the same thoughts, the way couples loop back to the same patterns, dynamics, conversations.

Often, at night on the Pont des Arts, a few guitar players and drummers begin a sing-along, the refrain of which is Bob Marley. He’s the artist they always come back to. French people of a certain age and population love him, but they don’t always know the words to his songs. There’s a great French expression for this, the slurred word sing-along style of someone who’s vague on the lyrics, especially in another language. It’s called chanter du yaourt, or “to sing yogurt.” So, the voices fade and wane for stretches, but everyone knows the chorus:

Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love that I’m feeling? Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love that I’m feeling?

Though I’ve heard it many times, more times here than elsewhere, and forget much of it, one image sticks:

We’ll share the same room, with a roof right over our heads.

We’ll share the shelter of my single bed.

I had always loved that last phrase and its conjurations of two lovers, their limbs twisted together in a space that verged on cramped but was instead cozy. Don’t many relationships begin in single beds? In dorm rooms?

The first time I left France, I left someone I loved very much. To reassure me, he said, “When you come back, we’ll live together.”

-What will our place look like?

-It will be a very big apartment with a very small bed.

It soothed us with what we knew. One evening, several months earlier, I had sat on the edge of his small bed. From across the room, near the door, he looked at me and said he loved me. I said, Moi aussi, je t’aime. He walked over to bed, sat down beside me, took my twenty-one-year-old face in his hands and said, Moi aussi, je t’aime with earnestness equal to mine. I felt confused. Weren’t we even? Wasn’t this getting redundant?

-Wait. What did you just say a minute ago?

-I said I was turning off the lights. J’éteins.

Later, it became our code. Hey . . . I’m turning off the lights. Yeah, I’m turning off the lights, too.

Back to the bridge. The refrain, so far, of these writings. My friend Cathleen and I questioned some teenagers one night. They said the locks weren’t just for couples.

-C’est pour faire un voeu.

-Oh! For wish making? About anything?

-No, he clarified, A wish for someone to love you.

It reminded me of an earlier trip to New Orleans, to the tomb of Marie Laveau, a nineteenth-century creole voodoo priestess of the French Quarter. People traveled to her tomb for the same reason. You knocked, whispered your love wish, scratched three chalk Xs in on the marble exterior, then left her a gift.

Dark chocolate. A string of red beads. Candles stubs. A folded note.

I’m not sure how many native New Orleanians do it, but the teenagers seemed to think the lovelocks or cadenas d’amour on the Pont des Arts were the traces of tourists. You made your wish, or announced your mutual love with a lock, then tossed the key in the Seine. Later, authorities in Paris might come by and remove all of them, as they had in late May.

Who gets that job? What kind of anti-romantic feels good about slashing through all those symbols of love? Maybe it’s the police department’s equivalent of Apollinaire’s speaker. Some guy who just got dumped. The other gendarmes agree, “It’ll be good for him. All he does anymore is stand on that bridge.”

Our conversation about the locks was interrupted when one girl, followed by the group, stormed off to confront a clump of boys on the opposite side who kept shining a laser into her face. Were they trying to flirt in a third-grade kind of way? Like pulling a pigtail or popping a bra strap? It wasn’t working. She was furious.

I watched for a second, as she strode across towards them, her friends behind. Saw their bodies, confrontational, posturing anger. Saw the other boys stand up, followed by some gesturing, but glanced away after a minute. If we couldn’t hear them from here, it couldn’t be too bad.

We’re discussing the profile of the lock placers when they return. Ana says they have to be very young, that it’s just another version of making a big heart on the bathroom wall and filling it with names: Addie and Burleigh 4-ever, Terry + Beth = LOVE. We agree that Parisians must do it less. The grand gesture works better when you don’t have to pass by it daily, after things have gone sour.

-Hey, what happened?

She mumbled something.

-They were drunk?

-Non, pas saouls. Sourds! Not drunk, deaf!

She shrugs. And we don’t know sign language.

I cannot help. I only know the signs for billy goat, Jesus, and popcorn, none of which seem relevant. As I write, there is a woman in the apartment above me screaming in Spanish. In the past, the police have come. Once, there was a broken flowerpot on the sidewalk. I cannot understand her, but I imagine that she’s warring with someone she loves. That the same language doesn’t always make it easier.

Le pont Mirabeau

par Guillaume Apollinaire

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.

Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l’onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure

L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante
L’amour s’en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l’Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure

Mirabeau Bridge

Translated by Richard Wilbur

Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine
Must I recall
Our loves recall how then
After each sorrow joy came back again

Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay

Hands joined and face to face let's stay just so
While underneath
The bridge of our arms shall go
Weary of endless looks the river's flow

Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay

All love goes by as water to the sea
All love goes by
How slow life seems to me
How violent the hope of love can be

Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay

The days the weeks pass by beyond our ken
Neither time past
Nor love comes back again
Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine

Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay