Saturday

Rewrite the following in your own style and idiom. You aren’t revising: you are re-envisioning.

Translation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Once, in New Orleans, it was spring
and Sunday. There had been a little rain
just, I imagine, as the color green appeared.
The sky was still translucent gray
when we went in search of breakfast,
and the streets of the tourist quarter,
still quiet as the windows of closed shops.

In the stone-flagged courtyard of a famous cafe,
around a fountain, palm trees in flower pots
dripped picturesquely onto glass tables and
dark green chairs. A waiter with a black apron
dried a place for us and our Times-Picayune,
and brought cafe au lait and beignets.

Behind gray clouds morning continued to build.
Soon enough the city would steam,
but while we drank our café and talked
and dusted our shirt fronts with sugar,
nothing existed that was not pleasant. What-
ever else, I would begin any day perfectly.