The Table Comes First

     A cook a pure artist

     Who moves everyman

     At a deeper level than

    Mozart, for the subject of the verb

       To-hunger is never a name:

Dear Adam and Eve had different bottoms,

       But the neotene who marches

Upright and can subtract reveals a belly

       Like the serpent’s with the same

Vulnerable look. Jew, Gentile or pigmy,

       He must get his calories

Before he can consider her profile or

       His own, attack you or play chess,

And take what there is however hard to get down:

       Then surely those in whose creed

God is edible may call a fine

       Omelette a Christian deed.

       The sin of Gluttony

       Is ranked among the Deadly

    Seven, but in murder mysteries

       One can be sure the gourmet

Didn’t do it: children, brave warriors out of a job,

       Can weigh pounds more than they should

And one can dislike having to kiss them yet,

       Compared with the thin-lipped, they

Are seldom detestable. Some waiter grieves

       For the worst dead bore to be a good

Trencherman, and no wonder chefs mature into

       Choleric types, doomed to observe

Beauty peck at a master-dish, their one reward

       To behold the mutually hostile

Mouth and eyes of a sinner married

       At the first bite by a smile.