Produced by Dennis Camire
This week’s poem is by Maine Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum of Deere Isle.
Listening to Stones
Venus de Milo at the Louvre for Bruce Bulger
By Stuart Kestenbaum
At first there are so many
people crowded around her
with cameras, smartphones and iPads
that it looks like a press conference,
only Venus isn’t taking any questions
from the reporters today, she is risen
above us, and the tourists
below ebb and flow all day
like the ocean around the island
of Milo, where she used to live, where
stones must have life inside them
to make the gestures so human that
even the eyes are watching us.
She isn’t timeless for you can see
the passage of centuries in the pockmarks
on her armless torso and her face yet
she survives as we all survive — humans,
gods or stones — in the immutable light,
how still she stays through the busy day
and the silent, cool, star-filled night
Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu
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