“Serious poetry in western culture is more or less identical
with potent masculinity.”—
Alicia Ostriker in Stealing the Language

Rodin never saw him— with his own eyes.
Yet in seven years and fifty studies:
heads, bodies, full figures, he shaped
and chose and shaped again.

(The Commissioners accused and rejected
again and again.) So Rodin had to hear it—
with his mind’s ear—how Balzac at night
would awaken to throbs and heart beats

At the door of the assembly of the Word:
under the flowing robe, his arms fold like
an envelope, so the hands could hold
the swollen cock, the naked paunch

Merged with that upward force. The legs fork to
encompass Earth, so the miniature head could
contain all of France. So I have to feel with
my imaginary instrument how greedy the heat

Of sperm pulses. He must place it fast
and well with ink, or he will drown in it.
I wonder if I have breath to revive him—
his tiny face floating on the page.