Saturday, November 3, 2007

Nausicaa

For Lucero (Cuernavaca, 1962):

From On Beauty, by Elaine Scarry, Princeton University Press, 1999--

"Homer sings of the beauty of particular things. Odysseus, washed up on shore, covered with brine, having nearly drowned, comes upon a human community and one person in particular, Nausicaa, whose beauty simply astonishes him. He has never anywhere seen a face so lovely; he has never anywhere seen any thing so lovely....

I have never laid eyes on anyone like you,
neither man nor woman...
I look at you and a sense of wonder takes me.

Wait, once I saw the like--
in Delos, beside Apollo's altar--
the young slip of a palm-tree
springing into the light."