There’s a scene (no more than a minute or two I suppose)
Near the beginning of the otherwise unexceptional
Tarzan’s Peril.
It comes after some generic footage
Shot in Africa,
(You know the sort of thing)
Warriors, animals, la de da.
Anyway,
All of a sudden
There he is,
Lex Barker,
As sweet a Tarzan as ever shone from
The silver screen,
Bounding out of the foliage,
Rhapsodic in his beauty,
Smiling like the day,
Aflame with his sunlight.
And what does he do?
As if exhausted by his own beauty,
He falls by a mirroring brook and
Stares,
Delighted by the reflection he sees;
This jungle narcissus
Subdued
By his own
Loveliness.
As we all are.
But how did this scene get there,
Within such pedestrian matter,
This moment of rapt
Self-awareness,
This Tarzan loving himself
In the too-clear
Waters of a Hollywood jungle stream?
Not even the scene-stealing Cheeta,
Try as she might,
Dares to disturb the surface of this
Momentarily reflective pool.
