A Ray Bradbury Original
Found Poem by Elsa Pla
From “A Martian Joined Ray Bradbury and Me for Dinner in
Paris” by Henry Fountain,
New York Times, Tuesday, June 12, 2012.
He was a masterly writer,
a bit dressier than most
and so passionate about the subject.
That, it turned out, was no obstacle.
He wrote at least a thousand words a day,
and the wine kept coming.
A prolific signer of autographs,
funny, effusive, and genuinely friendly,
he carried around some felt-tip markers
just for that purpose.
So it didn’t really surprise me
when he knocked over his wine glass
on the white linen of the small square table
in a bistro on the Left Bank.
“My! That looks like a Martian!” he shouted
and opened his sport coat,
revealing five felt tips of different colors
lined up neatly in the inside pocket.
He added a couple of antennas
to the purple stain seeping across the tablecloth
and an alien face appeared—
A Martian in Paris.
He signed it and added the date for good measure.
It didn’t really surprise me
when a month or so later, I stopped at the bistro
and there was the tablecloth,
prominently framed on a wall
like a canvas from Picasso.
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