This isn’t Miss Duncan, the noted danseuse?
Not the drifting cloud, the wafting zephyr, the bacchante,
moonlit waters, waves swaying, breezes sighing?
Standing this way, in the photographer’s atelier,
heftily, fleshily wrested from music and motion,
she’s cast to the mercies of a pose,
forced to bear false witness.
Thick arms raised above her head,
a knotted knee protrudes from her short tunic,
left leg forward, naked foot and toes,
with 5 (count them) toenails.
One short step from eternal art into artificial eternity—
I reluctantly admit that it’s better than nothing
and more fitting than otherwise.
Behind the screen, a pink corset, a handbag,
in it a ticket for a steamship
leaving tomorrow, that is, sixty years ago;
never again, but still at nine A.M. sharp.