—Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fl.

Degas’s Little Dancer survived the Franco-Prussian War

where the starving ate rats, even wallpaper’s wheat glue

(they called them “gutter rabbits,” watching at sewers);

the wealthy had “antelope with truffles” on one menu

as enterprising Parisians became dog and cat butchers

and stole pets (which had not already been consumed);

on the same restaurant menu it also offered “bear paw”

and Castor and Pollux, two elephants from Paris’s zoo

turned into fine steaks, but only for the best customers;

Marie van Goethem also survived the Paris Commune,

the city uprising after France lost to Bismarck’s Prussia

(over twenty percent of Paris was bombed into rubble

by the National government); Degas’s bronze ballerina

is a copy. My wife took a photograph after I took hers.