Archaic Torso of Apollo

After Rilke

 

He has no head. He has no eyes

to pin us with his godhead. But his torso

is itself a gaze in which there grows

from inside, like a covered lamp, a fire.

 

Without that rising surge, divinity

would not ravish you, nor would a lip

trace the gentle curve of thigh and hip

to the shadowed center of fertility.

 

Without it, the stone would seem a broken thing,

chipped, cracked, dead, a stone,

and would not glisten like a wolf’s dark mane,

 

and would not from its remnants blaze and singe

you like a god. Of all its parts, there is not one

that does not see you. Your life must change.