from Paragraphs from a Day Book

Wednesday night at the Comédie Française:
a hundred (white and slender) well-behaved
adolescents, from one of the good lycées,
file into balcony rows saved
for them to see Genet's
'Les Bonnes'.
                       We're older than the actresses,
one of whose roles I took on
in San Francisco, our 'salon
production' - two men and one woman,
in black shirts and tight
black jeans. I was 'Madame'
for my friends' lyric vengeance five Friday nights.
Gerry, our 'Solange', delivered her
last monologue, hands crossed, bald under the rigged spotlight,
like a condemned man awaiting the executioner.
...