swooning in the presence of great art, especially when far from home."
New York Times International Edition
Today in a palace disguised
as a museum, disguised myself
as a tourist, I entered a crucifixion scene
as part of the crowd and woke with the smell
of ancient sweat in my nostrils,
a bloody membrane over my eyes
as if I were seeing the world through
a crimson handkerchief -
they tell me I fainted.
Although I am in transit from my life,
I packed stray bits of it to take along - a comb
with relics of my graying hair, snapshots
of my own recent dead, books as thumbed
as this Bible chained to the hotel bedpost, whose verses
I read to put myself to sleep. At night
in different beds I dream of home,
but in the morning the dreams
are gone like so much lost luggage.
I know there are landscapes waiting
to be entered: forests shaded in leaf green
where winged children play on pipes;
the blue translucent scales of water in seascapes.
And on every wall are faces, gazing
through an undertow of brush strokes.
Meanwhile, framed in the evening windows
of yet another city, the woman reflected
is merely myself, the halo
of light a streetlamp shining on my head.
But ghosts clothed in tempora
follow me everywhere,
as if art itself were a purpling shadow
whose territory I must step back into,
a place where I can hide myself
over and over again, where what is lost
may be found, though always
in another language and untranslatable.
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by Linda Pastan,1991
