The room is dark with diffuse winter light
and filled with cold air.
The craving for heat, like violin music, a shivering
vibrato, the frantic rubbing of bow and string
is felt in the core.
The satyr is better
suited for the icy chill, his fur covered
cloven feet are some protection.
Yet his half man bared flesh, his chest,
Patterned charmingly, with soft curly hair that narrows
into a line and directs the eye to his sex
bending out of a thick bloom.
The tremble of trepidation can easily be
mistaken as the craving for heat.
Danger as much as libidinous excitement floods the body
and the held breath of fear is too similar to the pants of lust.
Both are read in the satyr's eyes, divinely demonic, intent and fixated on you.
You don't know what to do with your hands
and yet imagine them doing so many things.
But is this you or has the satyr's stare entranced you
and these images more his want than your need?
You want to sit, but wait for the satyr's move.
You want this to be his dance,
You are prepared, but not rehearsed.
But he is in no hurry and converses freely about love
songs of medieval troubadours.
And after all, is not it
a bit oxymoronic, a civilized satyr?
But it is as much
for the conversation that you come
than the Dionysian abandon when you come.
You open your eyes as the flying
exclamation points punctuates your chest
and just a maddeningly
the entire of Eliot's Prufrock,
another song, another troubadour,
rushes like a tsunami of what is and will not be.
The painting of the Satyr
is in your line of vision in the room dark with diffuse
winter light and filled with cold air.
The trembling trepidation and
the craving for heat id too close.
All of the experience is felt to
keep away the pain you will not feel.
January 5, 2010
o
