Contrapposto

By Stewart Burke

Bronze statuette of a youth dancing

One posture pleases most in death or love,
that blithe angle of artless poise rejoiced
when troops of angels by fulcrum hoist
one ilium as if by wings of a dove.

Like the grey undersides of late Spring leaves,
the merest dip in space and time reveals
an elegant bearing which balms and heals—
or brings to ardent souls quickening heaves.

Radha beguiled Lord Krishna with such sways;
Aphrodite rose from a veinous shell,
borne upon the green sea foam’s gull-skipped swells,
shy as Donatello’s David’s lower’d gaze;

Buonarotti’s Laocoon fought snakes aslant;
Saint Sebastien, skewered, hips askew:
death’s last indignity Mantegna drew;
the Three Grace’s glabrous Canovan cant.

In jewel-strapped gown, thumb sur-la-table pressed,
John Singer Sargent’s Madame X’s fair
satin silhouette limned her sex’s air
in a manner sublimely auburn-tressed.

Fei’s Jinling Beauties Twelve, sinuous,
by moon windows and rosewood casements framed,
each belle by flower known, by hairpin named:
a king must s…