is painting a woman
in the last summer light.
All summer long
he has been slighting her
in botched blues, tints
half-tones, rinsed neutrals.
What you are watching
is light unlearning itself,
an infinite unfrocking of the prism.
Before your eyes
the ordinary life
is being glazed over:
pigments of the bibelot
the cabochon, the water-opal
pearl to the intimate
simple colours of
her ankle-length summer skirt.
Truth makes shift:
the triptych shrinks
to the cabinet picture.
Can't you feel it?
Aren't you chilled by it?
The way the late afternoon
is reduced to detail -
the sky that odd shape of apron -
opaque, scumbled,
the lazulis of the horizon becoming
optical greys
before your eyes
before your eyes
in my ankle-length
summer skirt
crossing between
the garden and the house,
under the whitebeam trees,
keeping an eye on
the length of the grass,
the height of the hedge,
the distance of the children
I am Chardin's woman
edged in reflected light,
hardened by
the need to be ordinary.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Eavan Boland, 1987
