Balthus: Nude in Profile, 1973
| And it was almost a girl who, stepping from | |
| this single harmony of song and lyre, | |
| appeared to me through her diaphanous form | |
| – Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus I,2 | |
| luminous | |||||
| lit from within | this torturous: | ||||
| translucence of skin | surface | ||||
| you cannot touch | you cannot take | ||||
| your eyes | from | ||||
| limned and liminal | |||||
| (something's given | |||||
| something withdrawn | |||||
| poised there posed | |||||
| and composed | |||||
| (line through | |||||
| her back firm | |||||
| to bare feet | |||||
| on the floor) | |||||
| the towel she holds | |||||
| before her of an O | |||||
| indescribable color | |||||
| an offering or | |||||
| a question | |||||
| a girl, | |||||
| almost | |||||
| from the image-stream | |||||||||
| from photographs, this: | |||||||||
| our wedding day (37 | |||||||||
| years they’ve spent | |||||||||
| sloughing theirs off) late | |||||||||
| afternoon and the successions | |||||||||
| of smiles given way | |||||||||
| to an almost non-face | |||||||||
| the photographer wrests | |||||||||
| tired too but smooth | (The air of a face
is indescribable |
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| (wrinkle-free at their age!) | – Roland Barthes |
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| to where (with what | |||||||||
| thoughts) have they | |||||||||
| withdrawn | |||||||||
| the arrested gaze | |||||||||
| to be held in place | |||||||||
| (was ever this once | |||||||||
| even) – here – | |||||||||
| no more | |||||||||
| without rejoinder | |||||||||
* |
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| and times | |||||||||
| and so I saw them | caught | ||||||||
| quite impossible | between two worlds | ||||||||
| to bead words on the string | simultaneously inactual and in- | ||||||||
| to knot the string round | actuality waiting to die and | ||||||||
| the neck of the page | already dead | ||||||||