308
SHE HAS A BODY
trunk grows out of the roots, of the world of roots where the secret of life is elaborated, but the body of woman forms aerial roots,
Like the fig trees of Asia. These walk on earth and sometimes attach themselves to others, male or female, and embrace in a beautiful shudder. Then one sees the magic plant, turned mandragora,
Know the intensity of human life. Why should I not speak of these marvellous roots? I am not one of those who would like to return them to the earth
From whence they came. All the plant! all the woman in her magnificent integrity, with all her joy, all her silk, all her dream, all her strength, all her reality!
XVI
The shoulders are the sources from which the fluidity of the arms descends, and the arms divide into fingers like brooklets. The brooklets have pebbles; the fingers have jewels, the onyx of nails and the eyes of rings. The fingers chatter as brooklets
And as birds. The hands are birds, the arms are reeds. The whole nymph rises to view, great unexpected flower, and shows herself naked to my distracted eyes, with her snowy breasts, double tabernacle of the heart;
With her flanks, lyre of delirium, with her belly, with her navel, from which was broken the cord that ties women to women in the series of generations;
With her legs: the temple moves toward the delights of its desires. It walks as toward pain, for it walks in life; it is living.
I did not deceive myself. She has a body.
XVII
One can trust then to natural logic. Logic has led me to contemplation of the beauty that I have created strophe on strophe. My work is good. I can regard it. But give me again a little fresh clay and my chisel.
It is necessary that I retouch the doubtful curve of the hips and that of the twin loins; it is necessary that I deepen the back that it may resemble the pearly beach where the sea reposes. I desire wonderfully to model the delicate play of the rhomboids and that of the large psoas,
