poems from the Louvre

 

Nike

 

Victory by name, you stand tall

Through the ages of man

They’ve tried to surpass, but you won’t fall

Your marble, now stained tan

And though your arms are lost

And no sword to raise

Your intact wings remain embossed

Your beauty obvious

That like hope you spring eternal

 

 

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Ode to a Grecian Urn

 

Keats was wrong – there’s no truth in the urn’s beauty

Just vulgar violence in terracotta

Like Shakespeare, and his dirty jokes

Put down in iambic pentameter

Like Donne, one poem sacred, the next profane

Like Michaelangelo, like Raphael

They all created works of dirt

And we have let flowers grow out of them

 

 

 

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