Chana Bloch: Beaux Arts

They knew something about pleasure, too,
those painters—how well they understood
it may be compounded
of the simplest elements, the merest trace
of water or light.

Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, for instance.
The bedclothes are thrust aside
and a woman’s fleshy thighs
sprawl across the canvas toward you
as you approach.

Courbet studies his nude with the diligence
of a lover. And lets you see
in the reddish fur
at the body’s threshold
a hint of wet

like the dab of white in the iris
that lights the eye.

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Note: L’Origine du monde (“The Origin of the World”) is a picture painted in oil on canvas by the French painter Gustave Courbet in 1866. It is a close-up view of the vulva and abdomen of a naked woman, lying on a bed with legs spread.

This platform will not allow an image which resembles pornography to be posted here. To view a reproduction and discussion of the painting, click here. Here is the putative upper section of L’Origine du monde:

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Poem from Swimming in the Rain: Selected Poems 1980-2015 (Autumn House Press, 2016)

Chana Bloch (1940-2017) was a poet, translator, scholar, and teacher. During her lifetime she authored six books of poems and six books of translations of Hebrew poetry both ancient and contemporary.