# Lustra/To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers

To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers
""Breathe not the word to-morrow in her ears." Vir Quidem, on Dancers.
Good "Hedgethorn," for we'll anglicize your name Until the last slut's hanged and the last pig disemboweled, Seeing your wife is charming and your child Sings in the open meadow—at least the kodak says so— My good fellow, you, on a cabaret silence And the dancers, you write a sonnet, Say "Forget To-morrow," being of all men The most prudent, orderly, and decorous!
"Pepita" has no to-morrow, so you write.
Pepita has such to-morrows: with the hands puffed out, The pug-dog's features encrusted with tallow Sunk in a frowsy collar—an unbrushed black. She will not bathe too often, but her jewels
Will be a stuffy, opulent sort of fungus Spread on both hands and on the up-pushed bosom— It juts like a shelf between the jowl and corset.
Have you, or I seen most of cabarets, good Hedgethorn?
Here's Pepita, tall and slim as an Egyptian mummy, Marsh-cranberries, the ribbed and angular pods Flare up with scarlet orange on stiff stalks And so Pepita flares on the crowded stage before our tables Or slithers about between the dishonest waiters—
"Carmen est maigre, un trait de bistre Cerne son œil de gitana"
And "rend la flamme" you know the deathless verses. I search the features, the avaricious features Pulled by the kohl and rouge out of resemblance— Six pence the object for a change of passion.
"Write me a poem." Come now, my dear Pepita, "-ita, bonita, chiquita," that's what you mean you advertising spade,
Or take the intaglio, my fat great-uncle's heirloom: Cupid, astride a phallus with two wings, Swinging a cat-o'-nine-tails. No. Pepita, I have seen through the crust. I don't know what you look like But your smile pulls one way and your painted grin another, While that cropped fool, that tom-boy who can't earn her living. Come, come to-morrow, To-morrow in ten years at the latest, She will be drunk in the ditch, but you, Pepita, Will be quite rich, quite plump, with pug-bitch features, With a black tint staining your cuticle, Prudent and svelte Pepita. "Poète, writ me a poème!" Spanish and Paris, love of the arts part of your geisha-culture!
Euhenia, in short skirts, slaps her wide stomach, Pulls up a roll of fat for the pianist, "Pauvre femme maigre!" she says. He sucks his chop bone, That some one else has paid for, grins up an amiable grin, Explains the decorations.
Good Hedgethorn, they all have futures, All these people. Old Popkoff Will dine next week with Mrs. Basil, Will meet a duchess and an ex-diplomat's widow From Weehawken—who has never known Any but "Majesties " and Italian nobles.
Euhenia will have a fonda in Orbajosa. The amorous nerves will give way to digestive; "Delight thy soul in fatness," saith the preacher. We can't preserve the elusive "mica salis," It may last well in these dark northern climates, Nell Gwynn's still here, despite the reformation, And Edward's mistresses still light the stage, A glamour of classic youth in their deportment. The prudent whore is not without her future, Her bourgeois dulness is deferred. Her present dulness . . .
Oh well, her present dulness . . .
Now in Venice, 'Storante al Giardino, I went early, Saw the performers come: him, her, the baby, A quiet and respectable-tawdry trio; An hour later: a show of calves and spangles,
"Un e due fanno tre," Night after night, No change, no change of program, "Chè! La donna è mobile."