Pittaluga’s Two Nymphs
(after two statues in the National Gallery of Art)
One of the Woods, the other, the Fields,
these two nymphs stand on plinths,
not pedestals, from which columns
would naturally rise, but in their case,
don’t, keeping them life-sized and able
to look at us passers-by right in the eye,
should they ever happen to look up.
Both are as delicate as porcelain or Parian
china, paler than alabaster, smoother
than silk, softer than marble. Their free-
flowing robes drape in fluid folds around
their hips and limbs almost suggestively.
The one holds up with both hands a flowering
twig; the other pinches a posy.
Both look as though they were sipping
cups of tea in high Victorian society, their dainty
pinky fingers extended. Within their niches,
surrounded by a dusky, dusty blue
background, they could be two distant
clouds of the cumulohumilis kind,
or cameo portraits by Wedgewood.
They seem to know where they stand:
the one in front of a tree trunk;
the other before a tuft of grass.
Their hair, parted in the middle, drifts
casually from ribbon-like headbands
across their brows and over their eyes,
which they obstinately keep downcast.