On Reading Colette

She relishes training a narrow beam
On square millimeters of human nature,
The shifting attitudes of men, of women
Toward one another, toward themselves.
The current fashions, particularized,
Brace her depictions of yearning, regret,
Indecision, impulse, and revision.
Some modish phrases, long out of mode,
Go untranslated. She dwells upon the everyday,
Heaps of taken-for-granted minutiae:
The frills on a dress, a feathered hat,
A porcelain cup, a wisp of hair,
And from these tesserae she builds
A magnificent wall-to-wall mosaic.