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At The Sight Of Lesbos, By Sea, Circa 200 A. D.

Sculptor, becalm yourself---for you have done
no wrong to art.  Your newest work is not obscene
because, sent for straight out of Mitylene,
the model came out later as a Lesbian.
You sculpted her to better inspiration
than her late, loudly stated disorientation.
When you envisioned her appearing like
an early Christian girl in long-hemmed, modest clothes
(and thus you had her clad, throughout the pose),
the difficult fact that her lover is a dyke
(as yet unknown to you) could not present
the least adversity against your pure intent:
such that the statue's comely artistry
triumphs above all homosexuality. 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

The form of the poem is a reversed Roman elegy (reversed as a literary form of the model's disorientation); such that the even lines, not the odd, are longer by two syllables.  This poem arose out of my experience at dinner this very night.  Seated at a posh restaurant, I found, in both my view and earshot, a lovely young lady who, I thought, might inspire a poem about an early Christian girl.  Imagine my shock, thereafter, to hear her recounting, to her friend, some of her lesbian disappointments (all the girls to whom she was attracted were, to her dismay, straight and uninterested).  At one point she did attempt to assert that she was really bisexual and not lesbian; but this soon reverted to the fully lesbian identity.

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last updated 22 June 2013 - 2:34pm
©17 November 2006 - 2:47am — S74rw4rd