Mutability

Tamara de Lempicka

Sleeping Woman

Mutability
(Publ. 1824)

I.
The flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow dies;

All that we wish to stay

Tempts and then flies

What is this worlds delight?

Lightning that mocks the night

Brief even as bright.

I I.
Virtue, how frail it is!

Friendship how rare!

Love, how it sells poor bliss

For proud despair!

But we, though soon they fall,

Survive their joy, and all

Which ours we call.

I I I.
Whilst skies are blue and bright,

Whilst flowers are gay,

Whilst eyes that change ere night

Make glad the day;

Whilst yet the calm hours creep,

Dream thou - and from thy sleep

Then wake to weep.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Tamara de Lempicka

Portrait of Marquis Sommi

Guys Like That

Drive very nice cars, and from

where you sit in your dented

last-century version of the

most ordinary car in America, they

look dark-suited and neat and fast.

Guys like that look as if they are thinking

about wine and marble floors, but

really they are thinking about TiVo

and ESPN. Women think that guys

like that are different from the guys

driving the trucks that bring cattle

to slaughter, but guys like that are

planning worse things than the death

of a cow. Guys who look like that —

so clean and cool — are quietly moving

money across the border, cooking books,

making deals that leave some people

rich and some people poorer

than they were before guys like that

robbed them at the pump and on

their electricity bills, and even

now, guys like that are planning how

to divide up that little farm they just

passed, the one you used to call home.

~ Joyce Sutphen ~

Two Bodies

Tamara de Lempicka

Idyll

Two Bodies

Two bodies face to face

Are at times two waves

And the night, an ocean.

Two bodies face to face

Are at times two stones

And the night, a desert.

Two bodies face to face
Are at times two roots
Laced into night.

Two bodies face to face

Are at times two knives

And the night strikes sparks.

Two bodies face to face

Are two stars falling

In an empty sky.

~ Octavio Paz ~