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On Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera () in the Louvre Not Compostela where these pilgrims journey. As in ballet, gallant and belle arise, Join hands and arms, and bearing staff and scrip, Move toward the waiting rose-bedizened vessel That amoretti guide and Amor’s torch. Venus looks on with laughter in her eyes. Love’s private joys publicly formalized, Reasonable enchantment rules, lest we, Otherwise, seem more beast than humankind. One woman lingers while Cupid tugs her gown. Bending her head to hear her lover’s speech, She lets her fingers on her fan disclose Gentle complaisance as she seems to say, “When I look up, my eyes will hold my heart With all its claims, more than your love can reach, Perhaps, but not Eve’s guile for you to blame, Nor Venus’s innocent, amoral gift, Only a woman caught by what caught you. “Though in Commedia’s plots, our roles are fixed— Silvia and Florio, or Livia and Leander, Counters in love’s game, partners in pas de deux— What we may say is free. So I from you Ask more than a lover’s plea—a man’s response,  You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Self-conscious, meditated, open as mine. The simplest of my sex finds your sex simple, While I, amazed by love’s power to subdue, Wonder by what illusion you are moved, “Whether you want to love or to be loved, Whether you need to know or to be known, As I all these and more. Although for you The asking seems enough (your eyes say this), When mine meet yours, what happens alters my being Irrevocably. Part of my story ends. I see the others enter on their way, Light-hearted folk, easy to love and leave, Regretting little, when Cythera’s long day ends. “For me my going will be like a charm, Chosen deliberately, although I know Warm hands grow cold, arms drop idly away. The sky seems vague with promise, melancholy, The freedom of the island evanescent. Some pilgrims have seen saints, carried their touch Homeward again to seal love’s errant will. If, when I close my options, you do not, Nor wish to leave the game, where will we be? And if I love you always, what can I say?”  You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...

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