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| Machu Picchu |
Gloria Swanson
as Norma Desmond:
"Alright, Mr. Demille.
"Alright, Mr. Demille.
I'm ready for my closeup."
With Gloria on Sunset Boulevard
James Hart
After cover photo, National Geographic, May 2002
She’s quite the cover girl with her ambered bones
and bronze mummy tones, enticing us with death’s
head eyes to meditate on beauty’s mutable moods,
to imagine how her joints would crack and rattle,
her stiff leather lips twisting brittle as she murmurs,
I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille. Here’s no celluloid
goddess like Swanson swanning down the curving stair,
her eyes blazing crazy fire only black and white can light;
not Gloria disappearing in the glare, but a woman’s husk
wound in shreds like a desiccated dimity, rigid fingers
clutching her fashionable stole for no evening out we’ve
ever dreamed, her knowing tell-all stare daring us to ask
her if it’s true what they say about living sacrifice, if she’s
indeed some dried up Incan queen of the damned framed
now in a familiar golden grid, a pollen yellow paper cover,
if time is kinder on the dark side of her tattered skin.
How long ago she might have led her own ceremonial
processional along the cliffs of Macchu Picchu, music
of flutes and thin taut skins and clacking sticks to pick
her way by down a mountainside, veils of cloud touching
imaginary brows where the great gods stood by proud,
though they glowered on this human need of theirs
to call rain down from the sky, hold it in a grailed skull
or two, and drink infinity from the wine of dreams.
I think it’s her pert parrot feathers in hues of blue
and jade, a few strokes of vivid red peeking through
that says it all for us, that flirtatious tilt sweeping down
like a cloche over her left eye’s empty socket, a Deco
echo of desire and damnation housed in fragile flesh,
not too much a leap to imagine her clasping now,
arm-in-arm, dashing remnants of her mummy man,
or smiles of savage gods strolling Sunset Boulevard.
April 19, 2002
James Hart
After cover photo, National Geographic, May 2002
She’s quite the cover girl with her ambered bones
and bronze mummy tones, enticing us with death’s
head eyes to meditate on beauty’s mutable moods,
to imagine how her joints would crack and rattle,
her stiff leather lips twisting brittle as she murmurs,
I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille. Here’s no celluloid
goddess like Swanson swanning down the curving stair,
her eyes blazing crazy fire only black and white can light;
not Gloria disappearing in the glare, but a woman’s husk
wound in shreds like a desiccated dimity, rigid fingers
clutching her fashionable stole for no evening out we’ve
ever dreamed, her knowing tell-all stare daring us to ask
her if it’s true what they say about living sacrifice, if she’s
indeed some dried up Incan queen of the damned framed
now in a familiar golden grid, a pollen yellow paper cover,
if time is kinder on the dark side of her tattered skin.
How long ago she might have led her own ceremonial
processional along the cliffs of Macchu Picchu, music
of flutes and thin taut skins and clacking sticks to pick
her way by down a mountainside, veils of cloud touching
imaginary brows where the great gods stood by proud,
though they glowered on this human need of theirs
to call rain down from the sky, hold it in a grailed skull
or two, and drink infinity from the wine of dreams.
I think it’s her pert parrot feathers in hues of blue
and jade, a few strokes of vivid red peeking through
that says it all for us, that flirtatious tilt sweeping down
like a cloche over her left eye’s empty socket, a Deco
echo of desire and damnation housed in fragile flesh,
not too much a leap to imagine her clasping now,
arm-in-arm, dashing remnants of her mummy man,
or smiles of savage gods strolling Sunset Boulevard.
April 19, 2002
Photo: Machu Picchu. www.inkas.com
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| Cover : May 2002 |
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