WOMEN OF THE WORLD

 

 

            Why should Renaissance paintings always pose

            madonnas out of doors, sheltered at most

            by pergola or porch?  Bellini’s owes

            in part her strangeness to her throne as outpost.

            Far without a city like a toy,

            walled and empty, she lays out her boy,

            whose livid looks already seem brought low,

            over her lap.  She draws back in woe,

            their only neighbors fated snake and bird

            by man’s first disobedience cast as foes.

            The future’s here with her; as if they’d heard,

            carpenters, intent, rush to and fro.

 

            A modern sovereign rose to single rule

            from outcast station as a prostitute –

            so courtesans excelled in thought’s pursuit

            as reigning intellects of ancient schools –

            quite impossible to picture her

            as framed within a Dutch interior.

            We must image as beyond the pale

            a public destiny for womankind.

            Attempts to place her in our order fail;

            the virgin is all mother, the whore all mind.