in honor of a former student's first visit to Paris:

Impressionist Galleries, Musée d’Orsay

The illumination here is perfect:
Winter sunshine warms
The Caillebottes, Pisarros, each canvas washed
In even, northern light.
Beyond the window, clouds race over Montmartre, which rises
Above the city in shifting sun and shadow.

Visitors to the galleries cast minor shadows,
Their footfalls muffled. Each canvas is perfectly
Aligned for viewing. A reverent hum rises:
Murmured appreciation. A Monet haystack is forever warm
In August sun; Cézanne’s gamblers study their cards in steady light;
A still life stays ever ripe, its glass and linen always newly washed.

The gallery’s space is constantly awash
In movement: A Japanese girl walks in her boyfriend’s shadow;
Six Italian art students chatter, hair bleach-highlighted,
Ignore a disapproving Cézanne self-portrait; a businessman in a perfectly
Tailored suit bends to read a provenance and, suddenly warm,
Removes his scarf; a woman of a certain age rises

From a bench to study a Van Gogh portrait. Odd flashes of color rise
In its night-blue sky. Monet’s cathedral remains awash
In morning haze; Renoir’s cat stays forever warm
In Julie Manet’s embrace; a child sits permanently in the shadow
Of Monet’s luncheon table. Two Sisleys of one flood hang in perfect,
Permanent synchronicity, different only in angle, quality of light.

Whistler’s mother in black and grey ponders some inward light;
Degas’s laundress enjoys a never-ending yawn, steam rising
From her iron; his dancers hold their poses perfectly.
The still gallery is always awash
In the movement of its visitors. I glance from the indoor shadows
To the bright window. A voice murmurs warmly,

“C’est beau, Sacre Coeur, n’est-ce pas, tout en face?” Two warm
Smiles greet me: an aged couple, arm in arm, delight
In the direction of my gaze, from Whistler’s still, shadowed
Mother to the window. We three gaze at their city. His hand rises,
Rests on her shoulder. Sacre Coeur is suddenly washed
In brilliant light. Others join us, rapt, in a flash of perfection:

Clouds racing, shadows rising,
Paris is warmed, awash for an instant
In perfect winter light!

Thornless Brambles

“This,” she smiled across the table,
The winter sun angling low across teacups
And warm bread, “This was the summer
For blackberries.
There was no end to them, it seemed.
They grew in such profusion.
We picked them for the picking’s sake,
Not to eat them then and there
Or serve up fresh for supper.
We just picked and picked,
Watching them, jewel-like and black,
Fill up bowls and baskets.
And somehow that row of canes
Gave us more and more.”

She nudged the bread in my direction.
“Try the jam,” she said.
“We turned some berries into jam
And some into cordial
To take the nip off winter.
But the remarkable thing,
More than the taste of the jam or cordial,
More than the taste of the berries
Taken home for supper
Or eaten then and there in the midst
Of those thornless brambles,
More than the use or the taste, then or now,
Was the giving out of more and more and more,
The sheer profusion of that row of canes.”

Cornered

In 1948, portrait photographer Irving Penn built a narrow corner in his studio and invited his subjects to inhabit this space in any way they chose to pose. (See three examples above and to the left, from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, the stunning exhibit of Penn portraits of artists, musicians, and writers now showing at the Morgan Library and Museum on Madison Avenue (at 38th Street) in Manhattan.) The ensuing series of Penn's 1948 black-and-white portrait photographs thus has impeccable formal consistency. What is remarkable -- and perhaps inevitable -- is that each individual approaches the tightly constraining corner so differently and perhaps so characteristically. Personality and emotion are dramatically revealed by the smallest details of posture, gesture, and gaze.

Morning Commute

Five words only heard above the din:
“ – Now, since the last abortion – ”.
The train roars onward through the tunnel,
Blurring whatever else is said.
Bodies press together in the crowded car,
Damp coats graze umbrellas loosely furled.
Throat bare, someone sighs,
“Ten more stops, and then – ”.
Hands on the pole nearly touch.
Glances briefly rise, meet furtively,
Then turn downward.
Quiet longing: muttered, close contained,
Almost intimate. Just a little short.