Artist Stranded on the Left Bank
by Bruce Boston
Having scaled the mountains of the moon
with no Sherpa for a guide,
having eaten steak and kidney pie
in the depths of despair
in a diminutive pub in Soho,
having consumed five-alarm chili
at The Brimstone Club
on All Saint’s Eve,
having wandered at random
through the endless galleries
of The Louvre on a wet afternoon,
having crawled the Continent
for love, for fury, for nothing
more than an impulse of the times,
he became a brash statistic
in the sordid history of absinthe,
deranged hallucination and
all his unspent masterpieces
revolving in his head.