1721 c/o Nathan Masserang

Antoine Watteau (la fête est finie)


Bid the bearer of cherubs
twenty of them, spiraling
into some bucolic sky.


Call the theatre-goers
and have them slip away
during an intermission.


Summon the actors, the clowns
the bitter salon goers and
the less bitter salon goers


Find the forests overgrown
hanging like disease
in a decaying lung.


Call them up
let them know
no one else will be joining them.


Make everything
slightly sad, slightly in love
slightly fleeting


and leave the two
in sudden embrace
to be serenaded


again
and again
and again.