Restaurant Quarter, Bruxelles

by poetrydiary

The road is a room between days
spent playing with history,
and the world flickers in flames
of perpetual table candles.

Women talk and smoke;
toying with men and memories,
supping on wine and life and love.

I think of muses,
the privileges of loneliness,
and how many nights I’ve spent like this;
sipping friendly wine,
swimming in dusk’s pool,
watching passers by,
and stirring through my soul.

The road is a room between days,
searching for what’s here.

————–

I’m in Brussels, as I have been twice a year for the past three years, working with people from all around Europe for a week, and connecting with shared histories and humour going back thousands of years. I feel very privileged to meet and work with colleagues from Bulgaria and Finland and Malta and Portugal and everywhere in between, and wish I could have a week every year like this (in fact everyone should have this chance, once a year, to meet like-minded people in whatever it is they do from other cultures). It is refreshing and life-affirming. Alas – this is my last time.

If you know this part of Brussels, just off Rue Gretry, I think you’ll know what I mean about the road, too.