Stiff, stiff as some barren tree
You stand,

A Greek goddess carved from cold marble,
Stark and white as an eye.

Where is the blood, the rose-colored flesh?
Some savage thing has eaten away

At all the softness. There is but tooth left,
Gleaming all over—pale, blank, and paltry.

Have all the world's mothers left you to dry?—
Mothers like the one that once slumbered in you?

It is shriveled with you now,
Your face, a sunken visage.

Wavering beanpole, you let your hair
Into the wind and stumble over nothing,

Nothing, all this nothingness!
Your body, your cheeks are bitten fruits,

The apple gone. This frame is but a filament,
A thing half-seen,

A crescent etched from this moon.