Montreal, Old And New Poem by Ragy Sandid

In every street there’s the name of a saint
Touring every street, every man just ain’t
And every woman bears the lightest clothes
That every contour just protrudes unrobed

And probed
You’d see shadows in every street
Shadows of people you’d rarely meet
Shadows of danger and frolic married
In tattoos, Mohawk haircuts, sanity somewhere buried

And scurried
Beneath the French welcome and the English
Conversation accentuated by being offish
Because the complete truth is in French
And English is just a continuation of the dense

And immense
Population just running round the rest of the land
Speaking a language that some need to understand
But the rest can just catch on or match on
Then take their pride and leave with a scratch on

Or have a patch on
Then move from lakeshore to lakeshore
Looking for a Montreal they knew before
But in the new they tell you to go to the old
And in the old they tell you they don’t care what you’ve been told

Because facts rolled
Montreal lives on a mountain but helps the valley
Opens up a street but lives in an alley
And tells all visitors coming and going
There are no facts here worth knowing

Or sowing
Because once you go home you’ll want to come back
You don’t know why and you’ll have no one to ask
Montreal is in a fog of thick trees, secrets in tunnels
There is no word in English for that funnel
Maybe Montréal….Montreal….I know
Mount Real!