Pygmalion

I pushed myself into the forge of my own flames, saying,
"If one so beautiful dips in Elysian streams
Then where is life for me?"
I whittled burnished ivory out of the rock, every figure
Was the cascade of her voluptuous breast,
Which my fingers, trembling
Carved, my digits fingered.
I set her on an altar of the moon
Rock and I sheaved its roughened grains
With my back, scraping and tracing, again and again,
The spiraling folds. O mater gloriosa, I said,
And feasted on her living lips, calcinite that dripped
The deep earth streams a thousand years
Before I saw those gorgeous azure
Cils mucoused round with the waxy moon
And the milky ways, spreading out in blackened
Butter thick on hamlets and the three spring towns. In their temples
They adorn her, and the smoky piers
Are burning through the grass, commingling with the poisoned,
Churning night. Passion, salt spray to the nozzle of the senses,
Promising the far flown and the golden, the virile
Slapping ruddy shores, secret, and virginal islands: I beat
My beating chest, I salute you.