“What Should I Wear Tonight,” They Ask, Few Knowing That Fashion Too Is a Figure and a Face of Spirit

 

With pants women have grown
audibly and visibly
more somber, grave, and stern:

Qu’avez-vous découvert
en adoptant des pantalons
autrefois destinés aux hommes?

Haven’t they thus dimly set,
through those tightly fitting pipes
believed to fuse breeches and thighs,

upon Inanna’s old and original journey —

which, except for Persephone
and perhaps for Eurydice,
was among ancient Greeks
reserved only
for brawny heroes —

whom they have now deprived
of their gargantuan breeches,
fit to ride a flock of beasts,

as if the point, whispered
beneath a gentle breath,
were to ask, piercingly:

“So who’s the devil now?”

And still — even when it is cold —
there are days when I mourn and miss
the flair, lift, and liveliness of shirts,
their piquancy and Romantic appetite —

the trembling and the shock,
the resounding waves of seas,
arpeggios of violins and harps,
and the clanking summons
of beauty’s bells,

worn to charge the air
with streams and tunes
of buoyant, bowing,
yet still well-ordered desire,

and just as true and fine,

almost Aeolian —

being fit to sound

what exceeds man’s eyes.