“It’s such a pity that we don’t have
Anything like a photograph
Of her about whom the ancients rave . . .”

He’d been talking about the well-known tale
Of her lawyer at her blasphemy trial
Baring her breasts to gain an acquittal.

Now, it wasn’t the ‘beauty’ of what they saw
That made the judges loosen the law,
But what’s been described as ‘sacred awe.’

Would visual be better than verbal, though,
Projected into the long-ago
Till we think we know what we’ll never know?

Fragments, copies, our museums still hold
Of statues she modelled, or so we’re told
(Though not the Delphi one in gold).

Well, at Thespiae, how did they feel as
Praxiteles, daring celestial malice,
Set up together, on equal pillars

Statues of her and of Aphrodite.
A girl and a Goddess damn-near Almighty
With a temper not to be taken l ...

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