Monday, January 11, 2021

Eiffel’s New Bohemian Edition

 

The question is: does the Eiffel Tower

imitate woman, either in a corset

or stripped off all, perhaps except

for some see-through straps and rings?

 

Or is that Tower there meant to teach

a modern woman how to look when all

else has become history and, once again,

as in the beginning, man and woman

 

are to be both as well as one—restored,

repaired and, if possible, as tall and lean

as an ancient temple, stern Dorian column

on top of which, with each morning, the sun

 

can place its bound and golden, girding beam?

From which door and from which window

is the Eiffel best to be thus read and written—

like a woman who steps out to a latticed balcony

 

and into the view that ties it all back heaven

and heaven back again—to her own figure

laced and floriated with streams of sighs

and sights of ours—as if also made of iron?

 

For isn’t she the eternal, venerable xoanon,

the piercing obelisk, the palladium-omphalos,

beauty divine briefly grasped in its grasping

that, though ever elusive, does always come

 

and delivers to its poet—a fresh new print?

 

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