Day 305: Shall I Compare You to a Painting?

I love Billy Collins. He's so irreverent and drole and always manages to surprise you in his poems with the unlikeliest (but highly endearing) resolutions.

Like in this one, 'Sweet Talk', where in an effort to woo, he compares his muse/lover not to the famous women in famous paintings, but rather, to light in a painting of a house, ha. But it works. It so works. (Given the choice, I wouldn't mind being compared to sunlight!)

*Check out the video below for maximum effect.



Sweet Talk - Billy Collins

You are not the Mona Lisa
with that relentless look.

Or Venus borne over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell.

Or an odalisque by Delacroix,
veils lapping at your nakedness.

You are more like the sunlight
of Edward Hopper,
especially when it slants
against the eastern side
of a white clipboard house
in the early hours of morning,
with no figure standing
at a window in a violet bathrobe,
just the sunlight,
the columns of the front porch
and the long shadows
they throw down
upon the dark green lawn, baby.