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David Wojahn

Choiron

The custom in Athens was to shave it, a practice
thought to be imported from the Persians or the Medes,

shave it smoothly & anoint it with perfumed oils,
so that it glistened when exposed, lamplight dappling

the labial folds; shave it & bejewel it,
scent & shimmer of its maquillage; Thracian ochres,

unguents to redouble its roseate hues,
& compliment its heightening tumescence;

shave it to recall some bald, idealized & gracile suavity,
the frankness of prepubescent girls. Choiros,

meaning cunt, but when it is so lavishly enfetishized,
when it is readied with such ceremony, the proper term

is Choiron, the diminutive, applied to emphasize its artfull
display--cuntlet, little cunt, daintiest of figs,

although an exact translation is impossible,
& those who seek to render it as pussy, or snatch,

or twat or variants thereof, choose to ignore
its more earnest, indeed more hallowed, connotations.

On the Babrinsky Vase in Munich, attributed to Philoneos,
the Hetaera sits with legs spread wide as two companion

Hetaerae kneel with razors at her crotch,
a bowl beside them--soap or oil in which

to dip their instruments. Already the pudendum's nearly hairless.
Foley interprets the scene as rape, citing Foucault:

"the razor's symbolism is of course. . .quite obvious." But shall we
beg to differ? Shall we hymn instead its sleek

& lambent petals? Choiron, how sweetly
do you shine. How shall we praise thy fecund estuaries,

lips to enfold thy alter, nubbed & tremoring,
& salty upon the tongue? Beloved, it has been a year

of sorrow unabated, the dead upon thy smoldering pyres
too numerous to reckon, the barrenness, the sleeplessness,

the keening nights exhausted from our petty wars. Saturday afternoon--
you're dozing on the chaise lounge, paperback collapsed

beside you on the carpet, chemise hiked up so that I
may wake you: glottal, umlaut, circle & the tongue extended

full to taste the wettening, saline & wordless tongue,
alembic to nothing but the purest longing & release & the gates

wherein so long we have dwelled in grieving
now shall open. O groan & the consanguineous cries.

Tongue to the door, tongue to the door
& briny with these fluent juices.

(from Spirit Cabinet, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002)