What Language Beauty? Poem by James Walter Orr

Come! I want to show you
How I had so much fun!
We'll all have to go now
Behind door number one.

I hope to get older,
But know I am not young.
Yet I wish to tell you
In a different tongue.

It's a different tongue,
Yet a tongue that is glib,
But too disciplined now
For a man to ad-lib.

See that woman's form which,
In pure bronze I have cast?
I just could not use clay,
For I made it to last.

I have studied through Spain,
France and Italy to Rome,
Eastern Europe to Greece,
But I finally came home.

So varied my studies,
What tongue should I now use,
To catch this girl's beauty,
What language must I choose?

The problem encountered
Was not simple at all.
Other artists' who tried
Found they hit a brick wall.

If now, in your mind's eye
You can see a smooth skin,
But translate it as piel,
Spanish texture goes in.

That's so different from peau,
to an artist's sharp eye,
So French texture is seen,
If the artist will try.

In the way you just saw:
English, French, and Spanish,
When treated the same way
From Swedish to Danish,

Was amplified just like
Was Chinese to Russian,
Without any decrease,
Italian to Prussian.

That is why the statue,
So lovingly rendered,
And perfectly cast that
I so proudly tendered,

Was done in a manner,
That my soul did regale:
I copied my model
Using nothing but Braille!