Her unawed face, whose pose so long assumed <br />Is touched with what reality we feel, <br />Bends to itself and, to itself resumed, <br />Restores a tender fiction to the real. <br /> <br /> <br />And in her artful posture movement lies <br />Whose timeless motion flesh must so conceal; <br />Yet what her pose conceals we might surmise <br />And might pretend to gather from her eyes <br /> <br /> <br />The final motion flesh gives up to art. <br />But slowly, if we watch her long enough, <br />The nerves grow subtler, and she moves apart <br /> <br /> <br />Into a space too dim with time and blood <br />For our set eyes to follow true enough, <br />Or nerves to guess about her, if they would.<br /><br />Edgar Bowers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-virgin-considered-as-a-picture/
