That Damn Cupid

...who or which is the main topic of this site in any season, let alone this one in the Northern hemisphere, as the hormones stir a young man's fancy and an old man's mind... It's difficult I find, being a poet, and a scientist by training - you want finality in the experimental results but you love the constant mystery and beauty of the world, never quite reached, never quite expressed. Take this Cupid. Not the actual one, but the head of Eros, Venus' very active young assistant obviously under general orders but with a very free remit under his blindfold - or so it seems to us who don't get to see the universal script if such there be. He's one of the few 'archaic' treasures of Greek art neatly plundered for the British Museum in circumstances not to be enquired into - 'saved for civilisation' would be the spin - but a winged messenger to this house in no small way. Which brings the whole matter of the non-material into question. And which is what some scientists find a challenge, others try hard to deny with cold facts. To get to the point. The beloved point. A reproduction of this little chap in a mixture of polysomething and marble dust sits on the table by the window here, I'm looking at it now. Why do I know that it's not just anyone's baby, baby, but Eros himself? (Venus, note, is a mature woman, Cupid just an innocent (ha!) child...) The problem, O scientists, the blessing, O poets, is that his expression, his intention dammit, is never the same two seconds together; and, always two seconds ahead of what I'm thinking now he's up to... he's always up to something and he knows I know it... and don't exactly know what and I'm two seconds after him, all the time... For instance, right now before I wrote this, I thought it would be good to give him a wipe. He submitted to it with the closed eyes of a child just old enough to submit to having his face wiped without screwing up his face into a performance; a beautiful, gentle submission (for once; first time I've seen him look like this) : now already, he's up to something - the corner of his mouth on one side has a mischievous little thought (or maybe not so little) playing around it; while his eyes are resting within himself in a meditation on pure wisdom, it seems (just a second, let me check on him, you can't leave him for a moment) aha! that's his game - the sculptor who trapped him, or thought he'd trapped him - no - was trapped by him! has seen two sides to his face: the left side would pass for a meditating Buddha, almost; almost blind, unknowing, unjudging of all worldly actions; the right side has an up-to-something muscle-pull at the corner of the mouth and cheek and eye which gives that side of his face a look of active goodwill; put the two sides together, and ha! it looks like mischief; but more like the divine mischief of Krishna sporting with his cowgirls. Is all this the moving theatre of my fantasising mind? Left and right lobes of the brain in see-saw mode? I think not. Ikons are famously said to play this game with the devotee; outer portrayal drawing out one's inner truth; and here's this Cupid, more alive than I am, I suspect... allowing me, who have acquired him/been acquired by him, to watch him as he makes the whole world go round and conquers all. But as to warning you in advance what he's up to with your erotic stirrings this fine Spring morning, all I can tell you is he's always on duty; always hatching some new divine mischief; and I'm always two seconds late in catching his newest cast of mind..