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This is a poem,
"Against Botticelli."

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You don't have to know
anything about Botticelli,

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except there was a period
when those two paintings were

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on every wall.

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Every place I'd go
into, there would either

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be the Birth of Venus-- the
figure in the half shell--

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or the Primavera
with the three graces

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and the figure of Spring.

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And I got sick of how beautiful
they were compared to me.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And thought I would write one
poem against each painting.

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But they don't refer
to them in any detail.

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There are no hidden art
criticism references

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or anything.

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The first one is against
the Birth of Venus,

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and the second one is against
the Primavera, the Coming

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Spring.

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One.

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In the life we lead together,
every paradise is lost.

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Nothing could be easier.

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Summer gathers new leaves
to casual darkness.

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So few things we need to
know and the old wisdoms

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shudder in us and grow
slack, like renunciation,

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like the melancholy beauty
of giving it all up,

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like walking steadfast in
the rhythms winter, light,

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and summer, dark.

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And the time for cutting
furrows and the dance.

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Mad seed.

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Death waits it out.

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It waits us out, the
sleek incandescent

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saints, earthly and prayerful.

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In our modesty, in our
shame, fast and steady,

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attention to the ceremony.

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Its preparation, the
formal hovering of pleasure

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which falls like the
rain we pray not to get

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and are glad for and drowned in.

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Or spray of that sea,
irised otters in the tide

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lashed, in the kelp
drenched, mammal warmth

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and the inhuman element.

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Ah, that is the secret.

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That she is an otter.

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That Botticelli saw her so.

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That we are not otters and
are not in the painting

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by Botticelli.

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We are not even in
the painting by Bosch

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where the people are
standing around looking

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at the frame of the
Botticelli painting.

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And when love arrives,
they throw up.

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Or the Goya painting of the
sad ones angular and shriven,

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who watch the Bosch and
feel very compassionate,

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but hurt each other
often and inefficiently.

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We are not in any painting.

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If we do it at all, we will
be like the old Russians.

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We will walk down through
scrub oak to the sea.

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And where the seals lie
preening on the beach,

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we will look at
each other steadily,

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and butcher them and skin them.

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Two.

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The myth they chose was
the constant lovers.

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The theme was
richness over time.

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It is a difficult story,
and the wise never

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choose it because it
requires a long performance,

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and because there is nothing,
by definition, between the acts.

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It is different in kind from
a man and the pale woman

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he fucks in the ass underneath
the stars, because it is summer

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and they are full of
longing and sick of birth.

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They burn coolly
like phosphorus,

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and the thing need
be done only once.

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Like the sacking of Troy,
it survives in imagination.

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In the longing brought
perfectly to closing,

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the woman's white
hands, opening, opening,

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and the man churning inside
her, thrashing there.

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And light travels as if
all the stars they were

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under exploded centuries ago.

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And they are resting
now, glowing.

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The woman thinks
what she is feeling

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is like the dark and
utterly complete.

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The man is past sadness,
though his eyes are wet.

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He is learning about
gratitude, how final it is.

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As if the Grace in
Botticelli's Primavera,

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the one with sad eyes
who represents pleasure,

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had a canvas to herself,
entirely to herself.

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