Rare Books and Music
Reading Room
How beautiful and long a face can stretch,
In competition with a sculpture on
A Norman pier, Modigliani sketch,
Or long as a Tahitian mountain dawn.
Can lips assume this richest red, as warm
As classic bricks in glowing twilight, more
Undimmed and dreamed than Monticello’s form
When Jefferson conceived it? Like a door
Or noontime openness, those eyes invite
The thoughts there in the blueprint called a page
To raise that mind, support it like a bright
Gate built to clasp the world, outlast the age.
As silent as the arcs of singing spheres,
This face holds waters’ thoughts in brimmed wide weirs.