Orpheus in Greenwich Village:

What if Orpheus,
confident in the hard-
found mastery,
should go down into Hell?
Out of the clean light down?
And then, surrounded
by the closing beasts
and readying his lyre,
should notice, suddenly
they had no ears?

–Jack Gilbert

Images: Georgia O’Keeffe. Cannas 1919; Louise Bourgeois, Extreme Tension; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Orpheus, Twice). 1991.

Text: Margaret Atwood