Why All Men Cheat Poem by gershon hepner

Fondling Venus’s left breast,
Cupid gives her on her mouth a kiss.
Both are blatantly undressed
But you don’t wonder what’s amiss,
seduced by Cupid just like Venus,
by Venus, if you are the boy.
Father Time is watching. Scene is
a parable, I think. Enjoy!
whatever life may offer you,
but if it is your mother or
your son I would advise you to
look very carefully before
you leap, for Father Times’ control
of time is greater your own
of your sex impulses, your goal
of what Jews call the yetser horra,
and gentiles devil––what a horror! ––
by him are every moment known,
the timepieces he winds all tickers
that stop when guys pull down gals’ knickers.

Of course your sentence won’t depend
on what bad things you choose to do,
but when your life comes to an end,
and all your so-called friends review
the life you’ve led help them by staying
away from incest. This taboo,
Bronzino, I believe, is saying
should be considered wrong for you.
If this is right why does he make
it seem attractive to the pair?
He’s telling you it’s hard to fake
indifference. Venus, when she’s bare,
not only makes her boy a slave,
but makes all rules quite obsolete,
except her favorite, “Misbehave, ”
which is why all men cheat.

Ken Johnson reviews an exhibition of drawings of Bronzino at the Metropolitan Museum (NYT, January 1,2010) :

One of the strangest and sexiest paintings ever made is “An Allegory With Venus and Cupid” (1540-50) by the Florentine Mannerist and Medici court artist Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72) . Its meaning has defied the interpretive exertions of generations of art historians, but the image certainly is arresting. Cupid, a naked boy, mouth-kisses Venus, his full-frontally nude mother, while fondling her left breast with one hand. Just behind them, the bald, gray-bearded Father Time reaches across with one muscular arm to hold up or take down a blue drape. Whether he means to shield or expose the incestuous couple remains unclear, and that ambiguity adds to the picture’s mysterious allure.
To see that painting in the flesh you have to go to the National Gallery in London. Stay-at-home New Yorkers who want to see a Bronzino must make do with two on public view: the gleaming portrait of Lodovico Capponi at the Frick Collection and the equally polished “Portrait of a Young Man” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But wait, there will be another opportunity to get acquainted with this extraordinarily suave artist when the Met opens “The Drawings of Bronzino.” The first extensive exhibition devoted to Bronzino, it will present almost all of his 61 known drawings. Including works in chalk, watercolor and gouache, it will feature studies for frescos, altarpieces and tapestries. Loaded with examples of virtuosic skill and allegorical imagination, the show promises to shed new light on the art, life and times of a singular old master. KEN JOHNSON


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