ODE TO A MODEL
V. Nabokov
I have followed you, model,
in magazine ads through all seasons,
from dead leaf on the sod
to red leaf on the breeze,
from your lily-white armpit
to the tip of your butterfly eyelash,
charming and pitiful,
silly and stylish.
Or in kneesocks and tartan
standing there like some fabulous symbol
parted feet pointing outward
-- pedal form of akimbo.
On a lawn, in a parody
of Spring and its cherry-tree
near a vase and a parapet
virgin practising archery.
Ballerina, black-masked
near a parapet of alabaster.
“Can one -- somebody asked --
rhyme ‘star’ and ‘disaster’?”
Can one picture a blackbird
as the negative of a small firebird?
Can a record, run backward,
turn ‘repaid’ into ‘diaper’?
Can one marry a model?
Kill your past, make you real, raise a family
by removing you bodily
from the back numbers of Sham?
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