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The Venus of Urbino |
Oh baby, you rose like a whiff of smoke from Dresden
Georgione’s Sleeping Venus, so chaste, so crushable
Your eyes closed, lashes resting on cheekbones—
The bumpy curves of you echoed by the distant hills
A place in the background that required a man’s mind
To be whipped like a team of horses around your bends
Later, Titian loved you better, more passionately
You still reclined, but now awake, those eyes drilled
Holes into the souls of men, made for a bride’s chest, a war chest
Commissioned by a duke whose wife was far too young
You stretched out, arm flung up, tauntingly sexual, unfurling
the scent of a woman, with your delicious little arms and soft belly
The Duke of Urbino must have rubbed against the painting
or perhaps Titian did, desperately horny for the Duchess
I imagine you rolled you hip that way to make him groan
You thrust out and laid back and breathed in the shallows
Your little wisp of hair like a pennon for his lance, the marriage
of his blade at its hilt in your expensive little scabbard
By the 1800s, Manet had dispensed with pretention and painted
You as a prostitute with an African maid and a bouquet of flowers
forever in recline in afternoon light drifting in the dusty room hoisted
On your side looking bored, resolved and resigned as the light changed
Forever lounging, prepared to charge a man a fee—
your hair, now blonde, curling on your forehead like a wave without a sea
copyright 2014
Viola
Weinberg |
