by Julia Griffin

After Ovid; for Sophie

“Tourist who simulated sex with god of fertility statue defended for ‘amorous exaltation’”
—The Telegraph

Poor Galatea, turned to flesh and blood,
Esteemed her new embodiment a dud.
Efforts were vain: she could not but detest
The way that skin squashed inwards when depressed:
Lips were so spongy, kisses made her shiver,
As you might feel if smooching with a liver.
Mankind was meat: however hard she tried,
She could not focus on the bones inside;
Her lover sang her praises, but no tone
Could match the calm of metal or of stone.
Picture her, then, discovering, in Florence,
An antidote to so much shamed abhorrence:
God Bacchus—hitherto the pantheon’s
Most fleshly god, but here transformed to bronze!
A hard, bright, clean, unundulating form,
Which nothing but the sun’s own rays could warm,
Met her long gaze and did not even blink.
She felt her epidermis turning pink;
What now? She had no wish to cause a panic,
But non-organic called to non-organic;
Long-flattened hopes awoke and would not settle:
She longed to match her mettle with his metal,
Till, cutting through confusion’s labyrinth
(Also the crowds), she stormed that lofty plinth,
And seized, with no regard for time or place,
A joy beyond our flabby human race.