Tea and Tilleuls Part Three

PART ONE CLICK HERE

PART TWO CLICK HERE

Mogette La Deux-Chevaux Coquette
When she is on the roads
Of La Belle France
Adores le morning tea-time:
Casserole...
Camping-Gaz, water bouillonnant...

Souvent...
Un moment
Of réfléxion...

Mogette visited Oradour in 2000 and in 2018

CUP OF TEA CONVERSATION...

"Proprio" Dixit Mogette
In perfume of  tea and tilleul flowers...

"I know Proprio, that you do not forget
That today is the anniversaire
Of the massacre d'Oradour...

And you are thinking
Of the six hundred and forty-two victimes
And that they did not spare the children"...

"Yes, my dear Mogette"
Came Proprio's réplique
Between tea and tears...

"And of notre passage
en avril
Deux Mille
When we met
A man called Jean
In the Church of Oradour..."

"Ah oui"
Répondit La Deuche
"That is another Story, Une Autre Histoire..."

Et Proprio poursuivit
And carried on
in sombre tone...

"I was thinking that,
 in this moderne monde politique
Of bouffonneries and frivolités, corrosives et pathétiques,
of indifférence électorale...
We must not forget
That on our Continent;
This must never happen again"...

Silence.

Et Mogette pensa
A l'histoire de Srebrenica
And of the impuissance, the powerlessness,
In nineteen-ninety-five
Of our Union Européenne

And Mogette kept her silence, too...

Then, as proprio packed the Camping Gaz away
And in the PRESENT day

Mogette et son propriétaire
Finished their tasse de thé, there
In Melle
Jolie bourgade
Of ancient Mines d'Argent
Of églises romanes classés
Au patrimoine UNESCO de L'Humanité

And of écologie citoyenne.

Here is a photograph

Click on Mogette to visit Melle (3 minutes)

Of the Allée of Tilleuls
Collection Nationale
Peaceful, paisible
Et précieux
A place where there was no-one, personne
To perturb
 Quiet réfléxion...
And to conclude that the future
Is with our children,
Our grandchildren
And their
éducation...

Et Mogette, In Arboretum et Arcadia, elle
Sans vouloir idéaliser...
Concluded that, today, in Melle

Notre Europe,
Belle,
Et un peu compliquée

Continue
to
S'inventer.

And,
With our implication
Our Histoire
Writes

Itself...

On this Pentecostal lundi...
In our Europe of second décennie
Of twenty-first century
La Vie...
Even with its désillusions and its distractions pathéto-politiques
La Vie
Elle...
... aussi...
(Et même en mauvaise poésie)
Like Tea
And Tilleuls
Surtout and above all else...
...est
Magnifique.

Tea and Tilleuls Part Two

Coquelicots/poppies near to Niort...

PART ONE CLICK HERE
PREMIERE PARTIE CLIQUEZ ICI

Citroëns and Citrus fruit?
En français we call citrons, oranges et autres pamplemousse
"Agrumes"
or "Héspéridés"

Anyway...
LIMES are "citrons verts"...
And un "Tilleul" is,
Confusingly
A Lime Tree...

Like souvenirs involontaires
A bitten citrus lime can be bitter
(In French we say "amer")

Mogette espère
That you will enjoy these quelques vers
Of poésie embarrassante mais sincère
Of mémoire... involontaire...

Voici
Mogette's Pentecostal journey
 In June Deux-Mille dix-neuf
When travelling to La Haute-Vienne
Via other river-named départements:
 Vendée,  Deux-Sèvres Vienne
 et Charente...

LIMES AND LIME TREES

Mogette La 2CV Coquette
Adore les sorties dominicales
On Les Routes secondaires,
Départementales
Especially la neuf-quatre-huit,
Celle...
Which starts on an Atlantique
Island...
Qui traverse Melle
...Celles Sur Belle...
And terminates

Near Oradour-sur Glâne.

Alors;
Not on a Sunday, but lundi dernier
A French "almost-public-holiday"
...Le dix juin...
Mogette est allée
...avec son proprio
Entre boulot...
 et balade
Between work, pèlerinage and
Promenade...

Where she paused
Between two ronds-points
Recently abandonnés by
Les Gilets Yellow
For a photo
On une borne kilométrique
En plastique
Near to Niort...

To follow the histoire
Of notre little French car
Who can go very far
With just a soupçon
Of essence...

A pause...
To share
The morning air, a cup of tea
A tragic, douloureux
Seventy-fifth, soixante-quinzième
 Anniversary...
And the delicate fragrance: honey
Of
Tilleul
(Prononcé "Tea, Earl?")
Which
In English
Is not
Earl (Grey)
... or even... Tea
But a LIME tree,
You see...

A faux-ami.

Bicoz:
 Le Tilleul in these mauvaise poésie vers...
Produces perfumed flowers
And not

Citrons Verts

PART THREE CLICK HERE
TROISIEME PARTIE CLIQUEZ ICI

Tea and Tilleuls Part One

Mogette La Deux-Chevaux Coquette

Melle; L'Eglise St Hilaire

When she is on the roads
Of La Belle France
Adores le morning tea-time:
Casserole...
Camping-Gaz, water bouillonnant...

Souvent...
Un moment
Of réfléxion...
Ce matin
Mogette, elle
Se trouve
With Tea and Tilleuls
In Melle


1944, UN PEU D'HISTOIRE

In June nineteen forty-four
La Départementale D Nine Four Eight
Was a Route Nationale:
La N-Cent Quarante-Huit...

Click on Tour de France pic to see Mogette's friend on Le Gois

A little after kilomètre zéro
On the Island of Noirmoutier
There is un chemin submersible
(En anglais,  causeway), four thousand metres and more,
Called Le Gois
And when the niveau
Of la mer is low
This passage, spectaculaire et épatant
Links toujours, today, une île et un continent...

The ancienne Nationale travels on
Via La Roche Sur Yon
...Bournezeau...
Sainte Hermine
(Where the statue of Clemenceau can be seen)
Then on again
Just to the north
Of Le Marais Poitevin, a Nature's Venice, green...

To Niort...
Capitale, thanks to Seventies Autoroute A-Ten
 Of administration décentralisée and abbreviatonnée:
CAMIF, MAIF and MGEN...

Niort, pôle of emplois
And of paperasserie...
(In English, "Red Tape"...
Colourful imagerie!)

Mogette found a secret library near Melle...Merci les enfants de Mougon...

At kilomètre cent-et-something
Notre Nationale of seventy-five years ago
Départementale now,
Continues across Les Deux-Sèvres département;
Tournesol, soon yellow
 Pylônes and wind turbines, géants, tournants
And then goes on encore...

Eventuellement
To join another road
West of Limoges...
Not far from Saint-Junien

And Oradour
... sur Glâne...

And today, aujourd'hui, lundi dix juin

A Melle, sous les tilleuls, tea with Madeleine?

Under the lime trees
Les Tilleuls
Of the Arboretum in Melle
Half way
Between Noirmoutier
And Oradour...

Today, our intrépide bicylindre compagnonne
Toujours mignonne
Stopped in the middle of la matinée
With une pensée,
Un moment in sombre réflexion
 That seventy-five years ago,

In an old telephone kiosque!

Today
Was l'horreur, the horror
...of Oradour...

Une pause...A STOP
...To reflect TODAY
With une tasse de thé
En bonne citoyenne d'Europe
On our...

Priorités.

Now click HERE to read part two

Cliquez ICI pour voir
La suite de cette histoire...