The Venus of Botticelli
by Wendell Berry
I knew her when I saw her
in the vision of Botticelli, riding
shoreward out of the waves,
and afterward she was in my mind
as she had been before, but changed,
so that if I saw her here, near
nightfall, striding off the gleam
of the Kentucky River as it darkened
behind her, the willows touching
her with little touches laid
on breast and arm and thigh, I
would rise as after a thousand
years, as out of the dark grave,
alight, shaken, to remember her.
“The Venus of Botticelli” by Wendell Berry
from New Collected Poems. Counterpoint © 2012.
Reprinted with permission.
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