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Theme and Variation at the Met
by Earl Coleman

In this wing art lovers stand stock still and stare,
at the Memling and the Cranach pére;
this one at their right on loan from KRK, the junk bond lord,
the left from Grace’s Chairman of the Board.

In this next wing, the heirs of Chiang Kai-shek,
(whose stolen property, displayed, is worthy of this trek),
have hung their paintings, chop marks there,
in carved nephritic green, six inches square.

As Proudhon said, “don’t doubt all ownership is fraud” --
hung here is just a fraction of this depot’s looted hoard.

We are reminded of the Nazis and their mounds of Jewish teeth
(which held some Niebelungen gold perhaps), Lord Elgin, British thief,
who filched the marbles. Romans, slaying the barbarians,
and dragging Gauls and booty back to Rome -- the first totalitarians.

Art is art. The revolutionizing of a single graphic line
is what the art’s about, not some collector’s bottom line.