This one's called The Topers and it's
about this Velasquez painting, which when I saw it in Prado
in Spain just arrested me for a long time.
So it's called The Topers.
In El Triunfo de Baco, he looks sad for us,
for we who are too stupid to be sad for ourselves.
It's in his ivory pudge, it's in his ivory crown.
Who else is sad for us?
Grandpa Nelson down in Mississippi
who truly believes Jesus was sipping grape
punch at his last trough.
What's shocking really beyond this puffiness
is that night is actually quite generous.
It knows something that we don't, as did the Bacchus.
It's only Velasquez who sat around fussing
with the charcoal gray sky, and it's
Velasquez who lived and died.