[FOsen]

The setting might be Amsterdam or Utrecht,
the scene, by early Hals or late Vermeer:
it's auction day; a merry band is here
with faces lit to wonderful effect.
In back, a huisvrau, stiff and ruffly necked,
strains hard to catch the van-dyked auctioneer
(who holds what seems to be a giant tear)
proclaiming that this lot is quite select.
The crowd is surging 'round like running grunion;
they know he won’t return until November,
and caught up in the newest tulipmania,
each yearns to buy that thing shaped like an onion.
He packs them off to Ghent, though, come September—
these bulbs, inscribed “100 watts - Sylvania.”

Frank