Venus at Paphos

by Irene

In my spiral notebook, I wrote
the names of paintings,
in acts of acquaintance
with the mythological, containing
the mortal shadow of man,
and the scourge of a black angel
who sat by a young girl’s bed.

In the technology of the city
within which I trod with insouciant feet,
I wish to thank my lucky star
for the rays upon the palm tree
that mirrors the symbolism,
without the shortness of breath,
or the smoke of a black country.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), Alexandre Desgoffe (1805-1882)
Venus at Paphos
Circa 1852

We’re still the empty bones,
after all these years,
with all the hemming and hawing,
and the excavating of art,
and I want to say, it’s all good
real bad, amidst the lamentation
of convalescents, and those who fail
to convalesce, expiring upon the thin
stalk of the artist’s brush.

Here, I’ll give to you
the pomegranate in Venus’s palm,
parrying with a distracted Cupid,
propped by a classical temple
of a resurrecting sun
still rising in the East,
and you ask, who’s this Venus
with the sloping shoulder,
and the squashed breasts,
without a corset, to hold them in.
Well, I answer, at least,
there’s the symbolism
of the myrtle tree,
without the brier.

Note: God stands among the myrtles, as quoted in Isaiah 55:13: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”