Poem: "The Very Rich Hours of the Houses of France" by David Kirby, from I Think I Am Going to Call My Wife Paraguay © Orchisis, 2004. Reprinted with permission. 
 
 The Very Rich Hours of the Houses of France 

 Our plane falls from the sky
 into France, where everyone seems
 so much happier than we are,
 but no, it's not the people
 who are happy, it's the buildings,
 the high-beamed Norman farmhouses,
 the cottages with roofs of trim thatch,
 the chateaux set in verdant vineyards.
 The people are like you and me:
 their clothes don't fit very well,
 their children are ungrateful,
 and they're always blowing their noses.
 But the buildings are warm and well-lit,
 and even the ones that aren't,
 the ones that have bad lighting
 and poor insulation and green things
 growing on the tile, even these
 seem to be trying like crazy to comfort us,
 to say something to us in French,
 in House, in words we can understand.