For Richard, dead these thirty years and more;
and for Emory, who never
knew
Under the aegis of the
Lyceum,
with its always freshly
white-washed columns,
lantern, and
lilac-painted clock
that shows that, apparently, time has stopped,
They come (whose great-granddaddies whooped,
spurring their horses
through the hallowed portals)
and pose beneath the trees,
dusty and beautiful.
White thighs flashing on the
Green expose,
to other eyes than those of
love,
Olympian splendor in the
grass, almost
a nude Déjeuner dans le Grove.
“Isn’t this just like living
in a magazine?”
said my friend Emory one day,
from the venerable School of
Law’s
high portico, and I agreed. . . .
Into the seventeenth century
the Parthenon survived, though not intact,
until in one of the Med’s
interminable wars
a mortar bomb soared through the air and crashed
into that most unstable of
charges, black
powder, they had stockpiled there,
and the Pan-Athenaic chivalry
of Greek youth
blew everywhere.
Well, they say
nothing is staler than last
week’s news,
and even this generation will
pass away.
http://nbmaa.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/reinterpreted-artworks-le-dejeuner-sur-l%E2%80%99herbe-by-edouard-manet/
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Shirtless-Male-College-Student-Shorts-Laying-Down-on-Grass-PHOTO-PINUP-4X6-P720-/400691477845
https://aristotleguide.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/blowing-up-the-parthenon/
https://aristotleguide.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/the-destruction-of-the-parthenon/