Letter from Paris in October – Poetry International Online

From Margo Berdeshevsky

Notes from this side of the Seine

Dear Ones:

I’m passing the sound…On Oct 11 Joan Baez did a concert in Paris at The Grand Rex, it was sold out, standing room etc, I got a lucky last minute street vendor ticket AND… honored and proud to be able to tell this: her last song of the night, DEDICATED, she said, TO OCCUPY WALL STREET: was “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I dropped my tears.

Back in 1987—my first trip to Russia, a kid came up to me in Pushkin Square and took a necklace of beads he was wearing from his neck and gave them to me (like a Hawaiian lei,) saying at the same moment, “tell me about Woodstock, please.” in a heavvvy Rahsssian accent. He was about 16. “You weren’t even born then were you,” I said in my verrry minimal Russian, “and your country was quite repressed at that time, to say the least, how do you even know about Woodstock?” His answer, wide-eyed and sincere, & still in heavy Rahssssian accented English: “I heard it blowin in the wind.”

October 15, 2011: was OCCUPY EVERYWHERE

Paris: Occupy Paris day of rage–& “Occupy Everywhere”

More to tell:

The whole world is watching. Once again. I went out today with my eyes and my heart and my camera. How could I not? The internet site in Paris said it was linked to “occupy everywhere. ” And it said people were gathering at la Bourse, the Paris stock exchange. There were not huge numbers a first, but profoundly sincere ones, children, musicians, the committed and the seeking, the old and young, and total respect, and total “listening.” And, that “hand sign” that seems to have traveled the world like an eager bird in flight to signal yes, yes, a loud and a soft “yes.” And then people said they were at the train station, Gare du Nord, and then to the Hotel de Ville where the crowd became huge. I went to each. Eyes and heart and camera lens open.