APHRODITES

The Louvre

Antiquities: marble floors and walls,

copies of lost bronzes, Aphrodites,

anonymous or by Praxiteles

once or many times removed, preside

with their calm sexualities

flagrant and serene. And the public

faces of the Japanese women

who cluster around the Aphrodites

are masks we know from paintings, woodcuts -

small, red, deeply cut mouths

tightly poised, and downcast eyes, until,

responding to a gesture or a word their faces

open with complex smiles, knowing, eager

to please as they rush to companions saying

one thing with their eyes, another with the set

of their mouths, laughing, ironic, aware.

And the passionate curves of breast, buttock, thigh,

are here calmed by marble and we call them gods

to keep them distant so we can find

some pleasure, some delight, some consolation,

in our defections from their perfect form

like the irregular features and alert,

intelligent air of the woman needing

to cross a wide, dangerous street who might

also consider you with that look that hovers between

confusion and a breathless, calculating urgency.