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"The Inevitable 'But'" [by David Lehman and David Shapiro]

BAP 2010 Launch Ellis  DL  Gerstler  Glynn  Stern  Shapiro photo credit Lawrence Schwartzwald

The Inevitable "But"

But who can paint the snow?
Can you?
My nudes wear snowflake bikinis.

A Barnard grad on skis
asked: may I edit your genius?
(But who can paint the snow?)

A good fact-checker, for such am I,
can collect flaws and correct laws.
(She wore a snowflake bikini.)

You are merry because you saw
The Cherry Orchard and did not cry.
(Did you paint it blue, or did I?)

The aphorisms were decent, the sonnets obscene.
You painted from the body, I from the screen.
(My nudes wear snowflake bikinis.)

Like the grandson of a serf, I work at home
and stare at the sea on the screen.
In my nostrils, the smell of the foam.

(But who can paint the snow?)

-- David Lehman and David Shapiro (January 2009)
 
In this photograph from September 2010, from left to right inthe first row are David Lehman, Amy Gerstler, Amy Glynn, Gerald Stern, David Shapiro

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"Lively and affectionate" Publishers Weekly

Radio

I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark


from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman

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