Trapeze legs do not deflect
Your decedent apathy
The inert embodiment of fashion
A sullen paper cut-out
Detached, at cafe-concert
Budding champagne spears casing dazzling clementine
Smudged oil tobacco stain on glass, on silver, on canvas
A glittering paradox isolated on reflection, in reflection
Crystal mimic of velvet hourglass bodice
In symmetrical solicitous yet distant stance
Suzon, am I your spectral travelled patron?
Why protect décolletage with a bouquet?
What mystery does the unyielding marble protect?
Ambiguity, commodity, veiled sexual circus
May I procure English ale or your virtue?
Vulgar witness in modern Paris
Confounding new energy and dynamism
Electric bright like sun mirrored moon
The potent, elusive gaze of outer reality
Inner presence held in your world
Illusions of actuality brushed absent
The exposed, vulnerable, hitherto ignored mass
The imagined past of our belle epoch
Summon tension in a disjoined frame
Farewell Édouard, the condensation of truth in the expression
Far-removed from a window or mirror before death consumes
Audio – A Bar at the Folies-Bergere
Poem on the theme of the painting – A Bar at the Folies-Bergere by Édouard Manet
