Idolatry and Iconoclasm

It's a fearful thing to love a statue,
returning every day to circle the dais
and study again every immortal curve—
unyielding, immutable, awesome. At first
you marched round and round like a supplicant:
incanting, worshiping the platonic form
of beauty. But now you circle like Joshua
around Jericho: tooting horns, listening, watching
for the crack, the one hidden flaw
in the stone. Because loving a goddess
or a human clad in myth
means this secret seam stretching unseen
is your one sacred hope. Pass after pass,
prayer after prayer, what mortals couldn't
stir seems—maybe this time?—to quicken.