Pont Mirabeau

Stand still for a moment and feel the bridge under your feet. There is a faint vibration as cars and buses pass behind you. Below, the Seine runs wide and grey-green, moving faster than you might expect. Wind comes straight down the river here. In this far western stretch of Paris, the city opens up, and the sky feels bigger than it does in the old centre.

This is the Pont Mirabeau. It joins the fifteenth arrondissement on the left bank to the sixteenth, the old village of Auteuil, on the right. Few tourists come this far west. Most people who cross it are locals going to work, walking a dog, or cycling home. Yet this modest crossing holds a strange kind of fame. It is famous less for what it is than for a poem that made it immortal.

First, the bridge itself. It was built in the 1890s, in the final years of the nineteenth century. That was a confident moment for Paris, the age of the great world fairs and the age of iron. The engineer Paul Rabut was central to its design. He gave it a single elegant sweep of metal arches, resting on two piers in the river. In its day, engineers admired it as one of the boldest metal bridges in the city.

Look down over the railing toward the water. You will see that the two piers are not plain blocks of stone. They are shaped like the hulls of boats, pointed against the current. It is a practical design, because it splits the water cleanly. But it is also a little joke in stone. The bridge seems to sail on the river it crosses, and the boats that pass beneath it seem to have company.

Now find the statues. On those boat-shaped piers stand four bronze figures by the sculptor Jean-Antoine Injalbert. They are allegories, figures that stand for ideas. They represent the City of Paris, Navigation, Commerce and Abundance. Together they describe what the Seine meant to Paris at the end of the nineteenth century: trade, ships, wealth, and civic pride. Many visitors walk straight across without noticing them. The best views are from the riverbanks below, or by leaning carefully over the side.

The bridge carries a name from the French Revolution. Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, the Count of Mirabeau, was one of the great speakers of the revolutionary assemblies in the 1780s and 1790s. He was a nobleman who argued for the people, a large and loud personality, famous for his voice. He had no special connection to this spot. Paris simply gave his name to a new bridge, as it did with many generals, writers and statesmen of the past.

And now, the poem. In the years before the First World War, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire lived for a time here in Auteuil. He had a long and difficult love affair with the painter Marie Laurencin. When it ended, he wrote a short poem called simply Le Pont Mirabeau. It was published in his collection Alcools in 1913. Today it is one of the best-known poems in the French language. French schoolchildren learn it by heart.

The poem is very simple. Under the Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine, the poet says, and our loves. Then comes a refrain that returns again and again: Vienne la nuit, sonne l'heure, les jours s'en vont, je demeure. In English, roughly: let night come, let the hour strike, the days go by, I remain. The river keeps moving. Love moves away with it. Only the man on the bridge stays where he is.

Here is something many visitors miss. Apollinaire wrote the poem without any punctuation at all. There are no commas and no full stops. He removed them on purpose. Readers often say the lines flow without stopping, just like the water. So when you look down at the current, you are looking at the real subject of the poem. Not the iron, not the statues, but the river that never stops. Lines from the poem are displayed near the bridge, so look out for them as you walk.

Turn now and look upstream, toward the east. On a clear day you can see the top of the Eiffel Tower rising above the rooftops. Closer, in the middle of the river, there is a long, narrow island called the Île aux Cygnes, the Isle of Swans. At its tip stands a surprise for many visitors: a small copy of the Statue of Liberty. It is a reminder of the friendship between France and the United States. Few people expect to find Lady Liberty in this quiet corner of Paris.

The two banks feel quite different. On the right bank, Auteuil is calm and residential, with stone apartment buildings and tree-lined streets. Nearby stands the large round building of the Maison de la Radio, home of French public radio. On the left bank, the fifteenth arrondissement is more modern. Old factory land was turned into offices, apartments, and the Parc André Citroën, a large contemporary park with glasshouses and open lawns. It is close enough for a walk after you cross.

Listen for a moment. You may hear the low engines of barges and tourist boats sliding under the arches. Behind you, trains on the riverside lines rumble along the banks. Seagulls sometimes follow the boats upriver. In the evening, the light here is especially soft. The sun sets downstream, to the west, and the water turns gold and then a deep blue. It is easy to understand why a lonely poet chose this place to watch time pass.

The bridge was listed as a protected historic monument in the 1970s. That protection came partly for its engineering, and partly, people say, because of the poem. It is a rare case of a piece of literature helping to save a piece of iron. Many larger bridges in Paris are grander. Few have been carried so far by twelve short lines of verse.

Before you move on, take one more look at the water passing under your feet. It is not the same water you saw when you arrived. That is the whole idea of the poem, and in a way, of this bridge. The traffic will keep moving, the boats will keep passing, and the hour will keep striking. And for a few minutes, like Apollinaire, you remained.