As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won't <br />talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter, <br />immobile, by a leaf-coated pond <br />a statue stands white like a blight of winter. <br />After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins <br />and outs of centuries, pestered heather. <br />That's what coming full circle means - <br />when your countenance starts to resemble weather, <br />when Pygmalion's vanished. And you are free <br />to cloud your folds, to bare the navel. <br />Future at last! That is, bleached debris <br />of a glacier amid the five-lettered "never." <br />Hence the routine of a goddess, nee <br />alabaster, that lets roving pupils gorge on <br />the heart of color and the temperature of the knee. <br />That's what it looks like inside a virgin.<br /><br />Joseph Brodsky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/galatea-encore/
