on the rue Boissy d'Anglas (1922 and beyond)

behind the black door,

Barbette in drag was a great laugh:

boys and girls

dining and drinking and dancing

the high and low

gens chic and gens louche

often broken lights and leading lights

a thick flood of cafe society

gorgeous young men and women

often free, others at a cost

pouring into Le Boeuf 

like refugees from prohibition

and puritanism

with Picasso and Proust

(who would soon be dead),

arriving around eleven o'clock

with a drunken argument and their friends

in white tie and tails

or black like newspaper clippings

in a dinner jacket,

the men with ladies

in Chanel, Lanvin, or Vionnet

the ladies with ladies

watching Doucet, the house pianist,

make the rounds with his Corsican brandy and his keys,

past throngs of the beau monde

fashionably discrete he could hear them

whispering softly for their latest drug score,

or conversing with some unbelievable

pimps and queers before being turned out at 2,

when the bar closed to the Paris streets

and another day began.