VENUS with rosy-cloven rump <br />And rings of straw-bright flying hair <br />Looks in the glass that slaves are plying <br />Not for her own face floating there, <br />But for the sly and curious gaze <br />Of Rubens, through the keyhole prying. <br />Warm flesh of gods, by light embayed, <br />And drifting daemon-bones within <br />That sweep like music up and down <br />To pouts and cups of ivory skin, <br />Firm-valleyed croup, and swagging arm <br />In whose embankment bracelets drown— <br />Do you remain, you strokes of paint, <br />With Venus mocked and Rubens dead <br />And Beauty sold for an antique <br />And microscopes raised up instead? <br />Still are your old adherents true; <br />Rubens is there, if he could speak. <br />Rubens is there in your high room, <br />Rubens it is who blows his breath <br />To fix you laughing in the glass, <br />Who keeps a castle here from death <br />While schools go out and fashions fall <br />And microscopes and movements pass. <br />This castle-keep of joys conceived <br />But never sucked is Rubens' hell, <br />Is Rubens' limbo, cut and won <br />From darkness. Here he comes to dwell. <br />Man's heaven is the place he builds <br />By thoughts imagined and things done. <br />Some choose a paradise of gas, <br />And some, by pious deeds below, <br />The heavenly butter-hatch for flunkeys; <br />Who dream of nought to nothing go. <br />Therefore I'd sooner Rubens' hell <br />Than go to heaven with the donkeys.<br /><br />Kenneth Slessor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rubens-hell/
