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chasse?”
    â€œCet heureux temps n’est plus. Tout a changé de face,
    Depuis que sur ces bords les dieux ont envoyé
    La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé.”
    La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé
    Declaims from center stage in alexandrines her rouged rage
    Which doesn’t make a sound because there’s nothing she can say,
    And so it’s time to turn the page.
    In the East Village, on a sweet late-summer night,
    A goddess dressed in Dior parts the party crowd.
    A mouse stands staring at the Muse, at the amazing sight
    Of a completely lovely François Ier, with the band blasting really loud.

AT THE KNICK
    My lining is reversible. I turn the Seidel sackcloth inside out and there’s
    The city and the evening and the Knickerbocker Club,
    On whose posh porch across from Central Park who really cares:
    It’s summer and it’s evening and we’re smoking fine cigars!
    They’re Cuban lovelies and we’ll puff them to a stub.
    We’re made of smoke, we Martians, and there’s life on Mars.
    I’m looking down at you from where we are,
    A bit above Fifth Avenue, and you are walking by.
    I see you from a distant star.
    I see you in the shadows at the bus stop start to cry.
    A Latin-looking woman in the outfit of a maid
    Runs across the street to hand you something you
    Perhaps had left behind, and runs away, as if she were afraid.
    I turn that woman inside out and smell a zoo.

A TOAST TO LORIN STEIN
    The butler wheeled Mrs. Waldheim out of her private elevator
    And into the 1914 dining room
    And a table set with goblets and massive gold flatware. I was ten.
    This was St. Louis
    Before the sun set on all this.
    I think of Aldrich’s roommate Derrick Nicholas
    And dinner at Derrick’s grandparents’ in New York
    Who dwelled in a mansion on Madison
    Which took up much of the block,
    Ancient and magnificent Dr. and Mrs. Seth Milliken.
    I was talking about the early aviator Louis Blériot
    When all of a sudden Dr. Milliken—who hadn’t spoken in years—
    Gasped: I ADORED the fellow!
    We were terrified.
    His nurse rose from her chair next to his and started to cry.
    And apparently he never spoke again.
    Aldrich became Paris editor of The Paris Review.
    I followed him and Blair Fuller in the job. Youth! Paris des rêves!
    Fifty years later, Barack Obama rules.
    Lady Gaga reigns.
    Lorin Stein seizes the Paris Review reins.
    The joy or whatever
    Of being the new editor begins, as it happens, April Fool’s Day.
    You know what I’m going to say.
    I lift my glass to my friend.

RAINY DAY KABOOM
    I get young when I’m not looking.
    Or it happens when I turn out the light.
    Sometimes I hear Indians
    When I need to be scalped
    And need to be helped.
    How did it happen?
    It happened overnight.
    How come you got young?
    They put my body in a pot.
    They cut my feet off so I would fit.
    They put my face in a fishbowl
    So everybody could see it.
    It floated around,
    Looking for food.
    Looking for a smile.
    Then I saw you.
    I saw you opening a black umbrella.
    I saw you checking yourself in a lobby mirror.
    I saw the flames leap like a cheerleader.
    Sis boom bah.
    I take the microphone and read
    My poem “My Poetry”
    For the podcast, at your request.
    I doff my yarmulke.
    My scalp, actually.
    Welcome to South Waziristan.
    I’m the Taliban.
    I wrote their poem “My Poetry.”
    I meant it as an IED.
    O say can you see me driving over it up-armored?
    I ask to see the desk where you work so I can see.
    Already at your request I’ve
    Recorded Al Qaeda’s poem “Death”
    And the Taliban’s “My Poetry.”
    I’m a roadside bomb singin’ in the rain.

LISBON
    Quite frankly, nothing much happens.
    You walk downhill all day
    From the fascistically monumental Four Seasons Hotel Ritz.
    I have to say,
    I’ve had a pleasant stay.
    My Junior Suite makes me feel like Mussolini, it is huge.
    I think of the edifice as