Entrava ella, fragrante,
mi cadea fra le braccia.
O! dolci baci, o languide carezze!… Tosca

Albrecht Durer gets the measure of things,
the lay of the land, the news in brief.
His stylus scouts the hinterland

of a map blank but for lines
of latitude and longitude.
To keep his viewpoint right
he steadies his nose against the tip

of a desk-top obelisk, his eyes
narrowed on her raised knees.
Targeting a central vanishing point,

he jots the scribbled crotch.
Between his gaze and the precipitous
shins he has rigged a frame of wires,
a cage of squares, plotting

the vectors of her pillowy curves.
We call her "model." Supine
with raised knees. Tight chignon.

White bread of breasts and belly,
which, fixed on his spike,
he does not see. "Artist and model."
I watch them through a different grid,

describing his hooked profile
framed by a window: the stoneware
jug, the majolica pot, the bush

of basil, the toy merchantship
on the spread page of the sea.
And I see her lift from the horizon
like a coming storm, a thunderhead

crackling with potential voltage.
And I want him swallowed whole,
his obelisk in ruins, his tight

coordinates a ragged web. But
we cannot change a thing. Voyeur,
cartographer, we have our own
perspectives. We keep our distances,

eyeing our warped reflection—
twitching, foreshortened—
in the darkened tv screen.

Prairie Schooner, Vol 78, No 3, Fall 2004