Going back and forth between versions creates a pleasurably vertiginous kind of rhyme. I feel it must be a little like what Emily Dickinson felt reading between her versions, the sway of meaning.
Here's the Mitchell version, which you probably know. His title might be a bit archaic itself, but I will say I think he nails the last line.
Archaic Torso of Apollo
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.
* * * * * *
Predator's pelt, lion's mane, wild beast's fur; all three glisten. I think I like the stress in Mitchell the best, but "pelt" is the most luminous word.
no subject
Going back and forth between versions creates a pleasurably vertiginous kind of rhyme. I feel it must be a little like what Emily Dickinson felt reading between her versions, the sway of meaning.
Here's the Mitchell version, which you probably know. His title might be a bit archaic itself, but I will say I think he nails the last line.
Archaic Torso of Apollo
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.
* * * * * *
Predator's pelt, lion's mane, wild beast's fur; all three glisten. I think I like the stress in Mitchell the best, but "pelt" is the most luminous word.