stevengoldenpoetry

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In Dublin, A Woman’s Voice

First Iteration

It is an excelling French restaurant 

In an old city quarter not far from St. Stephen’s Green.

I sit under a canopy, cordoned off. 

All around in the alley, shoulder to shoulder covivialists 

Speak incessantly, or stand side by side drinking. 

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Bedecked in evening dress, I see her strike an entrance. 

The red and gold canopy seems her baldacchino.

Surreptitiously, I watch her high heels as she passes to a table behind me. 

Shortly after, she is joined by a woman impeccably prosaic. 

As they speak, only the one voice insinuates musically.

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I am bewitched enough to do the unthinkable.

When her friend excuses herself, no doubt a touch

Inebriated, for seconds I sit at their table in earnest. 

“From behind me, so unaware, how beautifully you speak.

Your conversation is not overheard. I do not know French.”

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She smiles slightly, wryly.  “French you may not know,

But my friend and I were speaking Romanian.”

My own smile answers her nervously, but also covers my retreat.

At the door, before leaving she turns around to find my eyes. 

She bestows a look of radiance, one proposing the promise of love.

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Let the poets stroll St. Stephen’s Green without me. 

Ignore the fountains babbling into stone. 

How poorly do they simulate the voices of the statues towering above. 

Art is nothing without the spark of a woman’s musicality.

Leave the parks be.  Listen for the Romanian voice beckoning. 

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But to where, and to whom. To You?

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Steven Golden

Hercules, CA. 

April 16th to April 18th, 2026