Apollo and DaphneGian Lorenzo Bernini, 1622-1625
Marble, height 243 cm
Rome, Galleria Borghese
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Tree-Poem for Apollo
My fingertips are planning their escape.
There go my hands up over my head,
they ease out ten long buds,
each one sticking out its tongue:
a wet green stalk
and a leaf. I am speaking to you now
only through the vocabulary of leaves:
how they are open and continually open,
the rush of sap
where the stem begins
the too-much-detail of their veins,
the daft shine on their faces
as they fall all over themselves
to see the sun,
the way they have of blurting out green! green!
All these things I say out loud,
but, for you, I disappear into an instant
tunnel of bark, furred-over, hidden.
How can my body go
into such abeyance that I become
only a thin blonde ring of growth,
so far down in the centre of the trunk,
I'm lost as the small private O
shining at the bottom of a well?
Deep as an animal brain
ticking its secret
on unknown frequencies inside
the smooth stroked head
under your hand.
........
