to a youth of Rome
Just because your brows
arc truer than the bridge
that spans the Arno;
your skin compares with ivory silk,
your lips with peonies;
your eyes reflect the firmament
in all its moods, the ocean deeps,
the iridescent shimmer
of the peacock's breast;
and your attire is murex-dyed,
a legacy of Carthage:
do not imagine you can share
the leopard pelts I rest upon
beneath a tesselated vault
of zircon, gilt and celadon;
do not aspire to trifle
with a woman noted for her mind,
prized beyond once-vaunted
lips and eyes, this parchment skin
whose palimpsest traced
greater men and lesser lies.
Do not presume, but linger
for a moment in these lines,
ephemeral as petrichor
released by lucent rain's caress,
bittersweet as carmine flesh
from globed fruit of Proserpine
they'll harvest from the earth
that covers me, in winter's Ides...