VIII. La Droiture

VIII. La Droiture

Say yes, say nothing, of fraternal ruin, resulting insolvency—Degas

Warded off distraction, or prattling, as it was the same son who deprived

Him of his mother at thirteen—Fleeing debt to Buenos Aires, a beloved

Sister trailed—Not his poisoned gift, a camera—The rubbed monotypes

Extraneous to himself—Zinc or copper plates blanched by glimpses of rose
Aerosols—Was it her box lined with new copper; rent only by an Ugolino

Without sons, or reprieve at the nailed door of L’Intérieur—Ugolino’s
Broken teeth—A cannibal’s congealed zinc common to neither marrow—Degas,
Stone-blind, made the rounds of his demolished apartment block; his rose

Pastel dust tidied at last by a schoolmistress—An ideal sin of a rose deprived,

Mallarmé fitted eight typefaces for the arbitrariness of a dice roll—His beloved

Nymphs Nijinsky carried away; a buried temple in Montparnasse—A monotype’s

Second print yields the negative—That insulting hieroglyph in the monotype

Persists print after print—In silver gelatin, the bronze copy of Rodin's Ugolino—

"Self-portrait with Yvonne and Christine Lerolle" he imagines groping each beloved,

Young woman as the writhing Count, who Rodin first modeled on Sèvres paste—Degas
Quenched the aspectral pink whenever he closed his eyes—Excluding a third eyelid, rose

Under ultraviolet light, he would say she has all the makings of a rat—Deprived

Of their airs, Titian red-haired bathers in Tiepolo pink—All too-bored sensuality deprived
Clouds or fire—Wherein, precisely, is this cultivated hostility, in the cognates of monotypes—

The chronic threat of calling back the Medusa—Receptive, but stony; never crystalline, rose

Quartz, which would be otherwise evident, except for her gauze—Degas grasps Ugolino,

Too late, over a dancer’s eight positions for dismemberment, or worst, indifference—Beloved,

Why didn’t you open up? In his purchased intimacy with women, he announces himself—Degas

Is inspired only by his hand’s relay; models deport around a zinc tub—In L'Intérieur, Degas,

Incited to pity, remains frozen in place—Mallarmé approached the optical problem deprived
Of a clumsily decorated muse—He penned all eight issues of La dernière mode of beloved

Fashions, jewel boxes for the jewels—Not the crass toilettes, or abstracted lands of monotypes,

Mallarmé hints at precognition by rarefied aromas, overpurposeful housekeeping—Rose-print
Calico intrudes in the self-portrait with Bartholomé's Weeping Girl and Angel of Death—Ugolino

Finds solace between these poles; poets ride bareback on Geryon, Monster of Fraud—Ugolino

Bites his hands that clutch the Archbishop’s skull, for vengeance might dissolve; Degas

Tried to match the “Sonnet en -yx”—His conceit overrides the affection for his rose-draped

Dancer vacating her wooden lawns—From not sleeping in her shell-curved back, a ptyx deprived

Essences of purple-winged flamingos straining brine, a butcher’s portions—Consider monotypes
Of butcher paper—Under anoxic conditions, the red flesh is kept, the iron denatured—Beloved,

Then, stronger than grief was my hunger—Without the compact of Ugolino’s bitterness—Beloved,
-YX ends with Septentrion, symbol of infinity, or the pieces of eight—Deprived of a rose disguise,
Or Degas’ remnants for monotype—Your eaten body is the stars, and last word of all three parts of the Divine Comedy.