Take Me To Your Leda
Oooh, saucy…
“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
How can anybody, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins, engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
This will be my only post for today as I have womanfully spent the past 10 days staring the flu in the eye and daring it to get me. No green expectorations, rattling cough, banging headache and hurty bones are going to knock me down. Hell no! Cancer? Heyy, no problemo. Kidney disease? I spit on your nephrologists, mwhahaha.
Until the moment I woke up this morning, stood up and nearly passed out. I believe this is known in medical circles as ‘feeling like shit’. Painkillers, lots of fluids, and at least one day in bed seems called for. Luckily I have books, as part of the reason I feel so bad is thatyesterday I braved the biting Siberian wind to go shopping on the bike. It was a rare treat. To be able to ride around the canals of Amsterdam, on a blue, crystal clear Breughel-esque day, bitterly cold but with the merest hint of spring in the air, is something to be thankful for.
But all incredible aesthetic pleasures have a price, and it seems the flu is mine. As far as I am aware, it’s not the bird flu. You’d pretty much have to ahem, ‘sleep’ with waterfowl to get it. I know we English have a reputation for kinkiness, but cygnophilia is is a little too kinky even for us. I’ll leave that to the Ancient Greeks.
[Image: Henri Matisse, ‘Leda and the Swan’, 1944-46. Privately-owned, Paris]
