- We cannot know his legendary head
- with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
- is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
- like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
 |
Archaic Torso of Apollo |
- gleams in all its power. Otherwise
- the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
- a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
- to that dark center where procreation flared.
- Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
- beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
- and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
- would not, from all the borders of itself,
- burst like a star: for here there is no place
- that does not see you. You must change your life.