The Gypsy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Maja_desnuda#/media/File:Goya_Maja_naga2.jpg







The Prado in Madrid
a cool tent of marble
set back from the Retiro Park.

I have come
to see the gypsy girl.
Goya painted her twice.
Maja Desnuda is her soul
the other, the clothed version,
only a mannequin.

She is not shy,
though she reclines naively
adopting a position
of demure sexuality, 
a gauche enticement.

Her eyes are calculating,
perhaps she is figuring
her pay by the hour?

I stand as near to her
as Goya would have.
I feel the space between us-
it is pressed and curved
like the tip of a brush.

Her belly button is inwards;
running vertically from it
a line of fine hair, 
a genitive gravity
that leads the eye downward
to her womanhood.

A less uncompromising artist
would not have painted
that delicate trail
yet it is his master stroke,
he has set a lioness
into a purse of flesh.

A finger points to a moon
that only gypsies can read
from the dark surface
of this world.

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