Paris in the the spring

The writers and painters went to Paris in a room,
didn't know that they'd be famous any time soon;
I imagined myself like them only well known now,
those days of winter meals forgotten anyhow.

Perhaps Van Gogh and Gaugin would play cards,
laughing that I dreamed of being like the bards,
Maugahm would chastise me for being lazy,
but at least like VG I was nowhere near crazy.

Someone went passed a window ciil, what the heck,
of course, I should have known, it was Toulouse Lautrec,
painting all those dancers with hardly any clothes,
why couldn't he paint someone in a simple pose.

Henry Miller and I cobbled together Capricorn and Cancer,
I said that you can be famous without my usual rancour.