Crouching Aphrodite or Learning to Love the Unlovable
“Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind”
-Sappho translated by Anne Carson
She crouches upon the pedestal
that presents her in all her rotted,
worn away, and lively beauty.
She is forever doomed to stillness,
yet resting in her huddled cavity is a softness,
which radiates from the dusty stone like salted waves.
From her cracked face violated by the thieves
of time, to the missing arms chopped
from her figure. My starving eye drinks in and devours
the holy sight of her stomach
with its rolling folds
that belong to a body
just like me.