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| Konstantin Makovsky |
Note: Venus, Roman goddess of Love and mother of Cupid, answered Pygmalion's unspoken prayer and brought his statue to life.
Breathless precision of stone melts to the bliss of flesh;
The sculptor's rapture creates a lover's discovery,
The sculptor's rapture creates a lover's discovery,
While the slow sweep of his hand keeps in its singleness
Both blade that cuts away and smoothing gentleness.
Almost his touch is a search for dust of ivory;
Almost her jumping pulse is his workshop's purpose.
But the moth-soft mimicry of internal passageways
Is incomplete. The summer-sweet susurrus at her mouth,
Though sent by Venus, is a tremble of wordlessness,
Their alabaster couplings her sole success.
He will turn philosopher when he learns her selflessness.
**
Ace G. Pilkington has published over one hundred poems, articles, reviews, and short stories in five countries. He is co-editor (with Matthew Wilhelm Kapell) of The Fantastic Made Visible, and co-editor (with his wife, Olga) of Fairy Tales of the Russians and Other Slavs.
