Silvered and Bronzed

Gabriele D’Annunzi

Silvered

When, half upraised, her belly to the sand,
Naked she welcomes the slow-conquering tide,
Then, in the full moon’s radiance, she appears
Like some great silver statue lying there.

A Callipygian Venus, lewdly posed –
Into the rounded surface of her sides
Two hollows sculpted, and her powerful spine
Furrowing deeply as she arches back.

The rising tide steals up and moistens her.
She starts and shudders at its icy touch,
Her loins a-tremble in their ecstasy.

The billows dash against her face, but still
She holds her chosen posture fearlessly
Till, at its height, the tide submerges her.

Bronzed

After her bath, all dripping wet, and swathed
In her dark hair, her body shivering,
She prints in the dry surface of the sand
The splendid contours of her flawless limbs.

Sometimes she graps her bosom’s living fruits
Causing their sturdy points to burgeon forth;
Sometimes she rolls about, and the coarse sand
Marks her smooth skin with curious designs.

Then, patterned thus, she offers up her all

To the moon’s kiss, on seaweed-couch outspread,

Remaining motionless with skyward breast.

And the distance on the background dark,
She looks like a great brazen statue, part –
Corroded by the sea’s acidity.

Come. Sit. Heel. Stay.

Sierra Demulder

When I took your virginity,
I did it carelessly, like a dog
left alone in a butcher shop.
I taught you the way adults love
(quick, dry, no eye contact.)

A year later, in the back of your car,
you showed me what you had learned,
what kind of man I had trained you to be.

There was nothing playful
in the way you hit, tenderizing meat.
Scraping at skin as if you were trying
to take back what you lost inside of me.

By the time you came on my back,
my nipples were chapped
and gnawed as bones. My legs raw,
newly butchered lambs.

—————————————————–

This woman, this Poetess-Goddess, has stolen my breath. I want to write like her someday, if and when I ever grow up. I’m simply and ecstatically overwhelmed by the brutal beauty of each weighted word. This particular poem is from The Bones Below, in which every single poem is a visceral blessing of the senses.

I WILL own every single book of her poems. Or I don’t think I could live.

(Thank you, Mr. Prince, for gifting me. I couldn’t be more pleased.)