Classic Poem

I

C LAUDIUS

" The great image of authority "

A naked negress, flanked in folds of blue,
Stands motionless, her brown skin edged with blue
Where silk crumples its last folds on the floor.
Her silver sandals startle the dull floor
With sudden light. Chased silver weighs her hands
With a square coffer, into which white hands
Stray for smooth ointments. The air is full of breath,
And the still chamber sighs and waits for death.
A huge bulk, yellow-bellied like a gourd,
Writhes on the bed. The bloated lids are lowered
Over the wine-veined eyes. The white hands stray
Toward the white ointment. New wavers stray
Through the blue silk as the blue shadows part.
White limbs. A peacock feather, irised at heart,
Tickles the yellow layers of the thick neck —
And Rome is saved from universal wreck!
The naked negress, flanked in folds of blue,
Stands motionless, her brown skin edged with blue.
Her breasts are pointed, heavy. Her thick lips
Curl outward like a trumpet-flower's tips.

M ORNING

Three old women scrub the marble floor,
Three old women whose knees crunch on the floor,
Circle and swish and dip their rags,
And scrub again. Three gray hags:
One with her cheeks all fallen in
Where toothless gums suck at the skin;
The lashes are gone from her rheumy eyes;
And one whose bony shoulders rise
To a peaked hump behind her head;
And one whose eyes are teary and red,
With a wrinkled mass beneath each eye,
Like a scrubbing cloth that's been wrung dry.
Three old women scrubbing the rose-strewn floor,
Three old women whose knees ache at the hard floor.