Plainly Dorian won't do because it wants a poem TO the painting. But perhaps this will. It's a re-jig of something I wrote before but it fits quite well, particularly as I gather that Eros/Cupid here may well be a lover of the painter.He certainly turns up in another painting, but older. I don't know that much about Caravaggio except that he led a rackety life and (I think) killed someone.
Amor Victorious by Caravaggio
Oh you are as sweet as the ace in the hole,
As the lilt of your look and the scrub of your hair,
And your hair is as black as the black of the coal,
And the coal is as black as the deep of despair,
And your skin is as pale as the pale of the milk,
And your teeth are as sharp as the teeth of the fox,
And your touch is as smooth as the smooth of the silk,
And your eyes are like diamonds shut in a box.
You are silver as starshine, as gold as a ring,
You are fleeting and fine as a trick of the light,
You are warm as the woof and the weft of the spring,
You are cool as a pool on a soft summer night,
You are wanton and wise as the elephant’s child,
You are lissom and lithe as a broth of a boy
And as fierce and as fell as a wolf in the wild
And the birth of my pain and the death of my joy.
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