Papa in Paris

everybody knows that Hemingway 

was in Paris 

just the other day, 

with the lost generation and Ezra Pound, 

marveling over all they had lost 

but suddenly found. 

Gertrude Stein and James Joyce and Scott, the significant others, 

some married, 

often with lovers 

losing their innocence 

like Papa! 

who should have known better but lied:

he went to go get her instead of the train 

then surrendered his own wife, 

long years before his took his own life.

and long before The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer 

and he the Award of Merit, 

and he didn't even need to share it.