Embalming marble corpses, chased with earth
and gold, exhuming amber knuckle bones,
upending ores of afterlife, a dearth
of animated moss and stones —

Recall the body, once inscribed by men
as beauty manifest, divine in form.
And now, collapsing jasper wonders when
its effigy would ever be so warm

as living flesh, as dripping tear, as blood
and skin and breath. For calcified, the cast
of Venus, bronzed and cold, deprives of flood
and blush — in this, she knows her chance has passed.

— the spade, it snapped. The bust, in dust, recoiled
her jewel from ancient light: the myrtle spoiled.