My Radiant Girl
I am not so sure there is a reason to tell this except for my wanting to say things about magic, about myth, about legend that might brighten up your day, if you believe in magic, myth, legend. It was Coleridge who said we might brighten up the day this way. Emerson might have said there are real nymphs in your city park, if you look. Oh I’m sure Cocteau and George Eliot had their opinions on nymphs. Let’s say Edith Wharton’s daughter had the last word. I’m adding, though. My nymph in Central Park I did not know was a nymph right off. I believe thoroughly in her now.
The nymphs don’t have to be little. She was. She had removed most of her clothing. Men watched. There she was, oiling herself—an unblemished beauty with her teacup breasts, with boy hips, covered by her sunning suit, which she had had concealed under the other clothes, a necklace rimming her neck, and yellow hair tied back.
She looked at nothing except to do the sunning—to take care of the oil, her skin, and how she should rise up, or she should lie down, or turn—she had to look. Two men next to me, whom I also earnestly watched, watched earnestly.
I’m a woman. You don’t take that for granted, I suppose, or that I believe in ghosts just because I say, “See the nymph!”
As Yeats said, “There are no such things as ghosts. Ghosts, no! There are those mortals who are beautifully masquerading, and those of them who are carried off.” Okay, as Yeats did not say.
Sometimes girls like her are gotten rid of in a not so gentle way. Socrates said of one, “A northern gust carried her over the neighboring rocks, because I said so.” He said, “I was swollen with passion.” Nietzsche said the people of the cities have the machine to get rid of them if they are annoying.
It was Captain Stewart who informed me that because I saw the girl, “You will rise to the summit of your power, then you will die a violent death.” He said that. His records confirm this fact.
So far, I have told the truth. It was straight from my heart to say we would be killed.