Let me bring Robert into this: his ability to plan a trip was impeccable, everything was preplanned and confirmed, our travels would be unaffordable by today’s standards, but the experiences of the past are priceless.

Another souvenir I have found is this little Bocuse wagon.

Lyon: At Le Hôtel Roosevelt. The first trip: 7/27/81: The shock of the pig’s bladder at our first time at Paul Bocuse.
The photo above was on our second trip, where record heat didn’t keep us, on 7/23/83, from our second dinner

Chez Paul Bocuse. We knew what to expect.

Now, an intro to the poem from the 2007 post:

My husband and I traveled extensively through Europe over nine summers: I could say, “filler-up” in French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Spanish; but don’t ask me to now. That part of my brain has become a gray viscous puddle. As much as I enjoyed my travels through France, I was always under stress. I studied French for eight years, read the classics, blah, blah, or as Seinfeld would say, “yadda, yadda, yadda,”I would drag old textbooks with me and study conjugations at night because I was terrified of making a mistake.  (Errors don’t fly in France.)  So, you can imagine my humiliation when in Rouen, as I was purchasing postcards in the souvenir shop within “The Museum of Locks” and asked for “tous les cartes,” “instead of toutes les cartes,” I feared  for my life.

I mean, just shoot me, right there. The lowest menial worker, the toilet-patrol lady can knife you with the tongue of correction. So, that was my mindset.  Joy and fear.  To me, France was like a footnote to Marat de Sade: Pleasure and pain.  Feed me truffles and just whip me. We splurged on dinner at master chef, Paul Bocuse’s Restaurant, outside of Lyons, twice, but this first time I actually had a panic attack; the onus of ordering was on me. Some fool was smoking a huge cigar at a nearby table, (you were permitted to smoke in restaurants in those days), and it hit me between the soup and first palate-cleansing sorbet:

Allergy.

I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t smell, I couldn’t taste and I thought I was going to be sick. All for $150 per person. (How very cheap that was in today’s dollars).

 

But, I lived to tell the tale of a dinner that scared me like a Friday the 13th slasher movie. And I even returned a few years later for a replay.

And now for the poem.

Birthing At Bocuse
©11/2001  ART and Poetry

I

The scene

Chez Paul Bocuse, a 3-star event
just outside of Lyons
serves one hundred-fifty dollar dinners
of endless courses:
soups that wear a pastry chef’s hat,
swimming pools of butter with drowning snails,
goose paté from ripened, grain-fed, white honkers,
wine and more wine,
and the intercourses;
sorbet between this and that,
cheeses and breads,
carts of custardy pastries
and superior chocolates
from Maurice Bernachon.
THE chocolatier of Lyons.
This is THE place.
The place where I seared my mouth on the soup,
and feared I was going to use the wrong fork.
The place where I assented
when le garçon recommended
La spécialité de la maison:

Chicken cooked in a
pig’s bladder.

II

Reconsideration

But now I have second thoughts
as my head reels from:
the fog of cigar smoke,
the murmuring around me
of the incomprehensible and proper French,
the wine,
and more wine.
My nasal interior rebels and swells
leaving my lungs spasming for air.

I AM HAVING A PANIC ATTACK.

Into my consciousness creeps a vision of
comfort and safety:
America. It’s Golden Gates:

McDonald’s.

I have been transformed into
a soldier who is about to meet the enemy:

MY DINNER.

Then fight to the death,
en garde!,
at this very table;
I wonder:
is a chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder
armed with a bayonet?

III

Religion

Oh God, please help me,
Next time I promise to stay home,
Stick close to the Kosher Deli,
order hot pastrami with those fat fries
the size of
Paul Bunyan’s fingers.
Just don’t let me faint and fall,
at the sight of a pig’s bladder,
face first into my foie gras.

Amen.

 

IV

Labor

I start to take
deep Lamaze, rapid panting breaths
as the huge silver, domed-covered tray is escorted to the table,
by the entourage of waiters.
The tray cover reflects a terror-stricken woman who
is about to lose the first six courses of the meal
on the floral carpet.

Waiter number one raises the cover in slow motion;

My life revisits me in a rapid succession
of cerebral film clips.
There it is, a five-star, smooth, pink mound on a tray,
a pregnant woman’s stomach, without the woman,
THIS is the one hundred and fifty dollar
“chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder,”
(it sounded a lot better in French)
but I don’t see a chicken.
And now my eyes are totally dilated:
breathe, breathe!

Waiter number two takes the cover away.
Waiter number three holds the huge tray,
while waiter number four approaches the
pregnant stomach,
the smooth, pink hump,
surrounded by little diced white and orange vegetables

WITH A KNIFE!

I think: this hump must be in its ninth month of gestation
And then I realize ready or not,
I AM ABOUT TO WITNESS A BIRTH–

Or maybe a murder.

 

V

Birth and Revelation

He lifts a paper-thin corner of pink membrane
with the knife
and knicks it,
as an act of a covenant,
a circumcision?;
it shrivels
like the Wicked Witch of the West,
And reveals:

A chicken.

A regular, normal, Frank Purdue

oven stuffer roaster from which
more of the diced vegetables are spilling.
The chicken, a cornucopia of joy.
The chicken, a familiar vision, at ninety-nine cents a pound.

Le poulet.

Waiter number four, having completed the c-section,
now carves like an experienced surgeon.

VI

Renaissance (Rebirth)

My breathing has begun to regulate.
My nasal passages are retreating,
permitting oxygen
into my lungs, aorta, extremities.
My being relaxes,
the six previous courses are no longer a threat
to the carpet.
I look to heaven with thanks.

Birthing can surely make one hungry.

 

You can see the completed dish being served, thanks to youtube! *
Credit and thanks! Andrew W. Lim (“Out on a Lim”)
📌https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ5KsVt-Z6Y

Comments from the original post, 2007 and on …