what fragments lay in stone and silent wait
for sunrise creeping stealthily through dark
to back-light marbled forms who knew Petrarch
truncated arms which strain to touch and sate
a cold and calculated yearning carved
in everlasting porous rock compressed
as otherworldly beauty barely dressed
they stand exposed and gorgeous, proud yet starved
to feast on passion's fragments etched inside
by sculptors long since sated, fed and dead
who pounded love with hammer, chisel, sweat
from abstract concept into sanctified
emotion pulsing from unbreathing stone;
stories bled from humankind alone
Memory of a literal run through the Louvre. The second-ex-Mrs. Frye and I did the whole museum in a single day.