My Downfall
My downfall: those pink articulate lips
Divinely flavoured portals to a mouth
Where soul dissolves … eyes darting
Beneath black brows, snares for the heart,
And the milk-white breasts, well shaped,
The twin rosebuds, fair beyond other flowers.
To itemize thus — is this to cast dogs a bone?
The poet’s pen — secret as reeds of Midas?
— Dioskorides (3rd Century BC), translated by Peter Whigham.
