It's Mark Doty's birthday today, but looking back through the archives I haven't really quoted from him--maybe because a lot of his work is long and/or or particularly heartbreaking. But here's the first half of a happy poem about clothes and fabric.
Couture
1.
Peony silks,
in wax-light:
that petal-sheen,
gold or apricot or rose
candled into-
what to call it,
lumina, aurora, aureole?
About gowns,
the Old Masters,
were they ever wrong?
This penitent Magdalen's
wrapped in a yellow
so voluptuous
she seems to wear
all she's renounced;
this boy angel
isn't touching the ground,
but his billow
of yardage refers
not to heaven
but to pleasure's
textures, the tactile
sheers and voiles
and tulles
which weren't made
to adorn the soul.
Eternity's plainly nude;
the naked here and now
longs for a little
dressing up. And though
they seem to prefer
the invisible, every saint
in the gallery
flaunts an improbable
tumble of drapery,
a nearly audible liquidity
(bright brass embroidery,
satin's violin-sheen)
raveled around the body's
plain prose; exquisite
(dis?)guises; poetry,
music, clothes.
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