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Kenneth Slessor - Rubens` Hell
Work rating: Low

VENUS with rosy-cloven rump 
 And rings of straw-bright flying hair 
 Looks in the glass that slaves are plying 
 Not for her own face floating there, 
 But for the sly and curious gaze 
 Of Rubens, through the keyhole prying. 
 Warm flesh of gods, by light embayed, 
 And drifting daemon-bones within 
 That sweep like music up and down 
 To pouts and cups of ivory skin, 
 Firm-valleyed croup, and swagging arm 
 In whose embankment bracelets drown— 
 Do you remain, you strokes of paint, 
 With Venus mocked and Rubens dead 
 And Beauty sold for an antique 
 And microscopes raised up instead? 
 Still are your old adherents true; 
 Rubens is there, if he could speak. 
 Rubens is there in your high room, 
 Rubens it is who blows his breath 
 To fix you laughing in the glass, 
 Who keeps a castle here from death 
 While schools go out and fashions fall 
 And microscopes and movements pass. 
 This castle-keep of joys conceived 
 But never sucked is Rubens` hell, 
 Is Rubens` limbo, cut and won 
 From darkness. Here he comes to dwell. 
 Man`s heaven is the place he builds 
 By thoughts imagined and things done. 
 Some choose a paradise of gas, 
 And some, by pious deeds below, 
 The heavenly butter-hatch for flunkeys; 
 Who dream of nought to nothing go. 
 Therefore I`d sooner Rubens` hell 
 Than go to heaven with the donkeys.
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