Such is the way that pedestals are made

Such is the way that pedestals are made
And women raised upon them
So our minds carve them from themselves
Sometimes to find a finer model
Than their art alone would allow
A realisation of all they could be.
Sometimes to make a fiction
That’s serves neither party well
A transactional device
That hides the truth of both
A mode of exchange
Become all that is exchanged.

And yet that line of your cheek
Is a slice into marble
This line of your neck
Is divine where it meets the shoulder
If it’s not the depths of heaven
That darken your eyes so
What seeds of obsidian
Did god plant there instead?


James Piers Taylor, 9/8/2006 London


IMAGE: The Soul Attains (1878) from the 'Pygmalion and the Image' series by Edward Burne-Jones.