Misty, by Alec Soth, from Niagara, 2005.

Archaic Torso of Apollo, by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit.

And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself

burst like a star: for here there is no place 

that does not see you.  You must change your life.

http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/transAdapt/poetryRilkeExcerpt02.html

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