Edgar Lee Masters

From “Canticle of the Race”

HOW beautiful is the flesh of women—

Their throats, their breasts!

My wonder is a flame which burns,

A flame which rests;

It is a flame which no wind turns,

And a flame which quests.

I know a woman who has red lips,

Like coals which are fanned.

Her throat is tied narcissus, it dips

From her white-rose chin.

Her throat curves like a cloud to the land

Where her breasts begin—

I close my eyes when I put my hand

On her breast’s white skin.

The flesh of woman is like the sky

When bare is the moon:

Rhythm of backs, hollow of necks,

And sea-shell loins.

I know a woman whose splendors vex

Where the flesh joins—

A slope of light and a circumflex

Of clefts and coigns.

She thrills like the air when silence wrecks

An ended tune.

These are things not made by hands in the earth:

Water and fire,

The air of heaven, and springs afresh,

And love’s desire.

And a thing not made is a woman’s flesh,

Sorrow and mirth!

She tightens the strings on the lyric lyre,

And she drips the wine.

Her breasts bud out as pink and nesh

As buds on the vine:

For fire and water and air are flesh,

And love is the shrine.