Sunday, April 22, 2007

Poetry Exercise #15: On Art

On Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe

You are what we call a nude,
Because a goddess lacks clothing.
What were you thinking?
This is not the sixteenth century—
This is 1863, and the pastoral is dead.
Women don’t dance
Nude, with sheep,
While a horny shepherd plays a flute.
We don’t eat nude, anymore.
You’re setting us back a couple hundred years here,
You know.
Now we have something called ‘morals’
And ‘ethics’
And we eat clothed.

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