three figures lifted from a classical engraving—
one left naked (though changed into a woman),
the others given beards and frock coats,
a tasselled cap, a riding crop.
The woman, smooth-surfaced and serene,
centres with her apricot flesh the chestnut-greens
and russets of these Ovidian woods.
Her eyes meet ours—
fraternal, brown, companionable,
full of a painterly intelligence
that forestalls lust.
That full-fleshedness of hers, her nakedness,
her plain and competent body—
stable, large-footed, with the big toe sticking out-
offer no crannies for our yearnings to take root in,
our desires, our unhealable lacks.
Envy them the closure of their woods
the reassurance of the flesh,
simple and safe, spared love and need—
just flesh, no fury, lack, or yearning.
It’s springtime—come, my pretty friend,
let’s lie under the greenwood tree.
The hens are clucking, full and round,
dawn is crinkling the rosy sky:
love is coming to claim your hand.
Mars and Venus are back again,
mouth storming mouth; their kisses scald
through vineyard, orchard, sun-scorched plain.
Roses and strawberry vines run wild,
rosy young gods make naked fun.
Come! It’s my tenderness that rules
the new spring flowering all around.
Nature’s in love, all birdkind shrills,
Pan goes a-whistling as he bounds,
the tree frogs chant their wet green calls.
Love died making love in your bed:
Do you remember that rendezvous?
Love died, you’ll raise him from the dead:
He’s coming back to fondle you.
Another spring has gone its way,
Lilacked, and tulipful, and tender.
Adieu, green season, on your way!
Bring back next year your splendour.
In the Botanical Gardens of Paris
(after Henri Julien Rousseau, the Douanier)
The lindens along the gravel paths
chatter and froth,
dark green, lime-green,
more longing,
here in the fifth arrondissement of Paris,
than anywhere else on earth
(though this you can’t have known,
you who in Île-de-France
yearned for Africa…)
They haunt you, these everyday
lindens, but you move on,
desire bending you toward the exotic things
cosseted in hothouses
or caged behind moats.
You stray from the gravel path,
take your chances in the labyrinth,
attentive to angry blarings from the elephant rotunda,
half smelling the hot lurk of lion,
the feral sweat of tiger
escaped into the boxwood hedges…
But all goes well today. Safe through the labyrinth,
you come to the winter garden,
where your eye will gorge itself
on jewel orchids and cattleyas,
succulents with fleshy leaves,
banyans and baobabs acclimated
in clay pots to the botanists’
chastely ordered
concept of the tropics
specimens, all,
neatly potted, pruned,
well-fed, and Latin-labelled.
But you see Africa and Mexico
in the curve of an acacia leaf,
your eye releases in each plant the wildness
it had half forgotten here in Paris.
Here, in the winter garden,
in the ecstasy of the eye on its object,
desire leafs into its own:
these pods, bracts, stems,
the twistings of these captive roots
suffice to feed the yearning that inhabits you.
Outside, the optical clock chimes in its kiosk:
noon drops its plumb line down
through lens after lens,
refracts and tintinnabulates
light into sound:
order, in the prism of your eye,
reverts to art.
The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
(after Odilon Redon)
Tremor of watercolour, tremble of the saint
sagging in ecstasy against his tree,
long white nakedness bondaged
to bare blue bark.
Arrowed with desire,
quivered through and through,
he shudders against his birch:
the woods flood with purples
pitched higher
and higher, mauves fusing
into lavenders, rose, molten
golds, the air keening
as his flesh flowers into light.
(after Henri Matisse)
The world outside exults and effervesces,
the sky, through your window, a strident smear of crayon,
geraniums rioting through your wrought-iron balcony.
In