Ungainly Things
Robert Wallace

A regular country toad—pebbly,
squat,
shadow-green
as the shade of the spruces
in the garden
he came from—rode
to Paris in a hatbox
to Lautrec’s
studio (skylights
on the skies of Paris)
and stared
from searchlight eyes,
dim yellow; bow-armed,
ate
cutworms from a box,
hopped
occasionally
among the furniture and easels,
while the clumsy little painter
studied
him in charcoal
until he was beautiful.
One day
he found his way
down stairs toward the world
again,
into the streets of Montmartre,
and, missing him, the painter-dwarf
followed
peering among cobbles,
Laughed at, searching
until long past dark
the length of the Avenue Frochot,
over and over,
for the fisted, marble-eyed
fellow
no one would ever see again
except
in sketches that make ungainly things beautiful.