I’m not sure there will be walls
or eyes
but if there are
this portrait may be wondered at.
Let me say then at once
so that no mystery develops
why-although he holds a manuscript-
the poet is not reading
and why-despite a mood of gloom-
he seems to smile.
He is looking not at the fire-escape across the way
nor at some starscape: aeons, lightyears further-
but at an Alice Neel
in a green smock
(no relation to the one
who poured his coffee an hour before
and chatted about her Civil War grandfathers);
this one, this other one,
thrusts into him deep, deeper, as if with her long brush,
takes it out dripping,
puts it down wet on the canvas (which he mustn’t yet see),
raises the brush again
and bends toward him: peering, peering as no one has before,
as if he were a new sea and she an inspired shipman.
So, wishing he could play back that plummeting stare,
those impatient brows,
as the sea would-
he looks;
and, wondering whether on this snow-bright noon
her cunning, caring, saltwater eyes
have caught the very bottom-
uncomfortably he smiles.
(Aaron Kramer)
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Based on Topics: Sadness Poems, Hope Poems, Smiling Poems, Literature Poems, Poets PoemsBased on Keywords: manuscript, chatted, grandfathers, develops, shipman, snow-bright, plummeting, saltwater, uncomfortably