Analysis & Behind the Scenes

Curves

Dear Readers,

After a poem celebrating the return of fair days in “A Change of Season,” Curves now immerses us in a more intimate exploration.

You probably sensed it from the very first lines — “From oranges to peaches, or apricots, it depends; / Is it not said that choosing is a renouncement?”— the fruits serve as metaphors for temptations, impulses, and choices. The text introduces this subtle duality between pleasure and renunciation, between what is desired and what belongs to the realm of the forbidden.

The poem plays with the senses. The fruits, “already tinged with the sun’s glow,” become symbols of pleasures both physical and aesthetic. The image of these fruits as “sins when plucked from the forbidden orchard” evokes a mixture of desire and guilt, with the notion of the forbidden sparking the imagination and fantasy.

Next comes the introduction of an inner tension, with the lines “like a photograph in a simple camera” pushing the narrator into a voyeuristic stance, oscillating between fascination and distance. This play of observation—contemplating without possessing—becomes a metaphor for the inner life, for our temptations and our ability to savor without giving in.

“Wanting to grasp the temptation that cannot be possessed” underscores this ambivalence, inherent in the contemplation of beauties that elude the hand but fully reveal themselves to the eye and the mind.

The text closes with a poetic meditation on art and mastery:
“These lines, perfect in their deviation, make me think / Of the work of a virtuoso who omitted to sign his name.”
Here, the concept of desire is replaced by the pleasure of a spectator who delights in the experience itself. The poem thus questions our relationship to the ephemeral and the unattainable, asking whether the fascination with what we covet does not nourish us as much—if not more—than possession itself.

And you?
What do you look at with desire, even without ever possessing it? Is it the beauty of an illusion, or the thrill of the forbidden, that captivates us most?

Peace & Bliss,
Aaron.