Eugene Schlanger, The Wall Street Poet


The New Bohemians - Nouveaux Riches

Curators predict what will be said,
How many notepads will be sold,
Finance as much a part of Art as Vasari
And Berenson, whom no one knows.
New artists arise, smarter than the last,
And each in turn in New York dons black:
New music, new artifice, and new names.

In simple white muslin, over a century ago,
In London, coaxed by his translucent strokes,
Whistler's mistress casts her sad Irish eyes
At the mantel, the mirror, at you and me.
What distance since Gainsborough's
Tragic actress cast her tragic glance at
The old aristocracy and docile allegory.

We are alone at a robber-baron's mansion
In an unbearably warm and wet August,
Drenched in New York's self-importance,
Pondering militant sexual evenings,
And garments and interiors where
Others mollified their doubts about
Our rich complicity in Nothingness.

 Eugene Schlanger
 

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