Pygmalion fell

in love with his image,
his image of her, he tells himself.
O Pygmalion! He fell hard
from his high tower bewitched
by the power of his own creation
his artful ruminations dwelling on cold marble
beauty. How surprised he must have been when she
first kissed him back, breathing real air from real lips and
O Pygmalion! How soft she is, now that she can kiss.

And yet how callous, she is almost
adamantine as she realizes she is finally alive
and no longer his; she is her own and she is real and she
is woman and knows who he is in love with and it is not with
woman but with stone, and an artist alone could be so blind
How surprised he is to realize he is Narcissus when Eliza Doolittle walks out
that heavy door leaving behind only an Echo of His Fair Lady and only himself to love.

But O Pygmalion, is this not the nature of art?

References: 'Pygmalion' from Ovid's Metamorphoses, the myth about the man who hates all living women, but falls in love with his own art. Also referenced is Pygmalion (better known to Broadway fans in the adapted form: My Fair Lady) by George Bernard Shaw, about Henry Higgins, who creates a lady from a pauper (Eliza Doolittle), and subsequently falls in love with her. Eliza leaves him because of his arrogant/mean/self-loving nature. The final story thrown in is also from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the myth of Narcissus, the handsome youth who rejected the nymph Echo until she was reduced to only an echo. For his arrogance, he was punished; he fell in love with his own image. In the end, we are all just one true story.

This poem owes it's inspiration to Ways of Seeing by John Berger, specifically its sections on women and how they have been depicted in art.