Paul Violi


KkK Paul Violi Irresistible Prose Feeling very lazy in your absence I’m not surprised by how easily A picture of you undressing Appears when I lightly As lightly as brushstrokes Erase the punctuation From a sentence in which All the fascination of women in repose The languor the idleness the abandonment The mutual leanings on one another The outstretched limbs the indolence The harmony of attitudes The delightful air of a profile bowed over a lute Studying the notes of some gamme d’amour The breasts’ receding elusive contours The meanderings the undulations The pliancies of a woman’s body The play of slender fingers upon the handle of a fan The indiscretion of high heels peeping below the skirt The chance felicities of demeanour The coquetry of gesture the manoeuvring of shoulders And all that erudition that mime of grace Which the women of the preceding century Acquired from their mirrors All this with its particular intensity of tone Its special luster lives on in Watteau

KkK

Paul Violi

Irresistible Prose

Feeling very lazy in your absence

I’m not surprised by how easily

A picture of you undressing

Appears when I lightly

As lightly as brushstrokes

Erase the punctuation

From a sentence in which

All the fascination of women in repose

The languor the idleness the abandonment

The mutual leanings on one another

The outstretched limbs the indolence

The harmony of attitudes

The delightful air of a profile bowed over a lute

Studying the notes of some gamme d’amour

The breasts’ receding elusive contours

The meanderings the undulations

The pliancies of a woman’s body

The play of slender fingers upon the handle of a fan

The indiscretion of high heels peeping below the skirt

The chance felicities of demeanour

The coquetry of gesture the manoeuvring of shoulders

And all that erudition that mime of grace

Which the women of the preceding century

Acquired from their mirrors

All this with its particular intensity of tone

Its special luster lives on in Watteau