Two Thoughts on Daphne and Apollo (What Can and Can’t Be Captured)
Inspired by the Daphne and Apollo statue by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Sharp and dramatic
Soft and rough
Tree bark, a paralyzing trunk
Leaves that could be dappled, maybe—
Streams of sunshine through a forest canopy as
Eternal as marble, smooth and ready, shaped millennia ago
By a river, rushing, or a careful human hand
As eternal as terror, forever frozen,
Captured upon Daphne’s
Temporary,
Fleeting
Face.
Apparently,
Light shifts through her fingers
A glimpse of forest pushed through
By the industrial bulbs of a museum in Rome
Four hundred years from its creation
A millennium and a half from when Ovid described
One even older—ancient—moment
In a pastoral glade on a foreign, forgotten peninsula.
Apparently,
The light’s streaming rustles illusionary leaves
Upon Daphne’s gentle, eternal contours;
Or, anyway, that’s what those who have seen the statue say
But, no matter the angle of the photograph,
That light—
Transported from Thessaly to Rome with passed-down tales and chisels—
Is never conjured permanently.
—Sophia Kantsevoy
The Bryn Mawr School,
Maryland
ON DAPHNE AND APOLLO · Spring 2025 · Torch: U.S.
19