Galatea

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea, oil on canvas, c. 1890
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)


“Art lies by its own artifice.” -- Ovid


He is the sculptor;
I am the bone.

The drills and the needles
Are just the beginning of the drone.

Circling and speeding
Beneath his hand,

I have no home
He does not carve into.

In inches, the day eclipses,
Sobbing its way

To the pine-encircled dusk
From which I must form

A center.

If we are at all pure
It is due to the animals we mask.

He has made me catoptrophobic
And all eyes are mirrors.

What will I be after?
Forever someone’s other.