di Chirico’s “Conversation Among the Ruins”:  Courtly Love in the Twentieth Century after Freud

For once a male paints woman, man and hills

But showing not her body or her face,

Not even showing flanks and butt for thrills

Of drooling eyes.  A platform in a space

Upholding it as if a floating scene

Has nothing true to say about a guy

And woman, she more like Athena, Queen

Of Wisdom, heavy arms beneath the sky

Of Italy (?) and myths of goddess, man

And transcendental sexuality,

Beneath the Middle Sea, its wine dark span

Of dreams and mental sexuality.

  He only stares.  He does not touch.  She sits.

    That’s all.  He only wants to touch her tits.

~ Phillip Whidden