poetry

Barbarini, the Sleeping Faun
by Ernesto Superal Yee

(For Marj Evasco)

Everything that is
Deeply still
Is in him:

From the Grecian
Hair that crowns his confiding head;
Face with eyes laden with soothing sleep
And to his body most marbled
Lithe.

He is what he should be:
Perfectly chiseled from a god’s self
Who created for him a novel
Head: that which possesses two
Full grown horns;
Most proper gift arising
From the deferred
Legends of Mt. Olympus.

These unveiling horns, too,
Make him too
Much of a man
Forever sealed,
Reclined to sleep.

Deep sleep is neat
They say: man moves
The figurative language of dreams.

Perhaps, all it takes to dream
Of sleep is: the varying pulse of the clearest
Stream or the geometry of gold
Leaves scattered about one’s feet;
The shaggy texture of goat-
Skin wrapped round the neck, or
That rainbow behind one’s head!

Sleeping then is…
The toned
Wandering mind precisely
Speaking in fine space.

As in the Faun,
It is bliss to gain
Immortality by real designation:
Proving the axiom of a true
Cambiumed sleep.

Art as science should
Be.

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