To His Lover, That She Be Not Overdressed
The lilies of the field
That neither toil nor spin
Stand dazzlingly revealed
In not a thing but skin
And in that radiant state
Sheer essences they wear.
Take heed, my fashion plate.
Be so arrayed. Go bare.
~ X. J. Kennedy
The Lover’s Reply
Imagination, Sir,
Fathoms what eyes can’t see
And causes hearts to stir
While viewing drapery.
Such art becomes me best:
Wrapped against winter’s chill,
I find, though you protest,
You’re rapt against your will.
Jan Schreiber was Poet Laureate of Brookline, Massachusetts from 2015 to 2017. His books include Digressions (1970), Wily Apparitions (1992), Bell Buoys (1998), Peccadilloes (2014), and Bay Leaves (2019). A collection of his criticism, Sparring with the Sun, was published in 2014 and a new one, Breath Lines: How Poems Work and Why They Matter, has just been published by LSU Press. His translations of The Poems of Paul Valéry appeared in 2021. An advisory editor of Think journal, he teaches in the BOLLI program at Brandeis University and runs The Critical Path, an annual symposium on poetry criticism.