And that is in the Fogg museum, which
is a few blocks from my house and in Cambridge
in Massachusetts.
Just a little meditation on that painting, but it also
moves outside of the painting.
And continuing.
"In his eyes and hands brash assurance,
delight masked as a boast.
Though he knows his life adjudged by force and denial.
Max Beckmann, the Beckmann he himself painted in his mid-30s.
And if the mirror no longer leans in a Bremerhaven attic,
wedged between dollhouse and chiffonier,
if it's smashed and exists now only as dust
motes invading a circle of lamplight
or altering a North sea sunset--
Well, he could never be broken or dispersed.
In black evening tux, his face, thickening,
confronted a smile aware of its own vanities.
Hair the color of gravity trapped
between hammer and anvil.
In his right hand, half smoked a cigar.
The curl of smoke invisible, insouciant,
amused, and protected by the complete lack of insouciance
that is self-knowledge.
The left hand held away from the jacket shooing something off,
palm out so his wrist shows.
The skin there soft and embarrassed
by its rosiness, pulsing lightly,
like this woman's neck as she stands with me waiting
for the traffic signal, its curve to her collarbone
the place on a body where I love to think the world begins.
There, between two or three freckles,
all the world starting from this corner, an Isuzu Jeep idling,
garter belt tied to its rear view.
And by the cable TV truck, two kids in maroon soccer togs.
The crossing guard, loafing, starting with them.
Spreading to include the violence of a summer evening.
The MDC pools, the rib joints, and talk of software licensing
near the horse rider.
The bronze mediocrity of the horse's
withers and past the paddle boats,
the kickboxers out beyond them to fields,
snapdragons, golden rod, interstates,
foxglove spreading out like a foxglove.
And starting here, I promise my pleasure to be so large as to be
right, even if eventually doomed."