Woman Holding a Balance (Vermeer, 1664)

The picture within
the picture is The Last
Judgement, subdued
as wallpaper in the background.
And though the woman
holding the scales
is said to be weighing
not a pearl or a coin
but the heft of a single soul,
this hardly matters.
It is really the mystery
of the ordinary
we're looking at - the way
Vermeer has sanctified
the same light that enters
our own grimed windows
each morning, touching
a cheek, the fold
of a dress, a jewelry box
with perfect justice.

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by Linda Pastan, 1998



"Woman Holding a Balance" - Vermeer, 1664

from "The Reef"

So what is it, then, this being human,
except just being, here on the porch,
in the last square of sunlight,
dulled from some -
as it will seem much sooner than you think -
bearable blow.
You still can feel this last heat,
the softened and flowery breeze.
You can still hear the bird's static:
lovers pairing up all over town.


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by Elizabeth Arnold, 1999

Trompe L'Oeil

Whoever made this piece began
with boards of honest country pine
fit for a modest sideboard table.
As for the finishing,
I doubt he had a plan,
he simply led his brushes on,
or maybe it was they that led,
stippling and graining,
simulating to a T
maple, walnut, birth,
imitating inlays and veneers,
putting on the airs of Sheraton.
Utility took fantasy for wife.
O lucky day!
The fun was in the afterplay
when the true artisan
tells his white lies.

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by Stanley Kunitz, 1978

Reading the Writing

With his own hand he has given himself away.
"You are very secretive and fearful," she says
For twenty dollars, his mail-order explainer.
"You show no generosity to people
Or to yourself. Try not to be deceitful."
This is not palmistry. What she has read
is something he has written.
Like everyone else he is a man of letters.

He thinks what she has read was written
Decades ago when first he was forming
His characters after the various models
His hand in its cunning
Always succeeded in failing
To be more than a variation on.
Only the J of his John Hancock is John Hancock's.
So he became himself, like everyone.

She has taught him a lesson, his accuser.
All this he had hidden in the open,
Showing everyone no generosity to himself.
Perhaps in the future he will send
Himself only to the printer, who will reform him.
For now, he is trying not to be deceitful.
He is giving himself away. Here. In his own hand.

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by John N. Morris, 1984