Читать книгу Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing - Marianne Boruch - Страница 10

The Painting

Two brush-stroked boats, so-so weather, more detail

forward than aft, heavy

on shaded bits as

simple reflection, the mast dropping in water blurred.

Blur it more, gloom it up, says the teacher.

Use a rag and something stingy.

To look and look, is all.

Salt, fish air at dawn, turpentine. Or evening, that one.

To remember the past as

this painting remembers — beautiful, a little dull.

And maybe it was.

In fact, water can turn out demanding. Not staying put,

too much at odds in that glitter.

And people expect a quiet thing to hang on a wall

to forget their own noise.

That old guy bumming cigarettes for real

looked the part of another century, the ancient fisherman

contentedly mending nets in a time

with time to retie knots. So we

like to believe. And some would

sketch him right in, work him over like an afterthought,

historical. Better yet, to comment

ironic or just short of it. With him, without,

finally the worn reliable straightforward

sea, harbor, dream. Also this

for the record — three, not two boats. And those

warehouses weren’t pink, didn’t

watery-ache like the shadow they cast.

To be an artist, the best part — you, you’re in

and then it’s the same

but you’re not the same. Smoke

from a factory on the other side, a small one

but billowing soot and ash anytime, a bad idea.

Or a good one, meaning

world. Which could threaten. Or end.

Go for a larger, darker resonance. The teacher

saying so says

never an extra boat either.

I heard things once, blurring out of sleep

or some other elsewhere to

none of us the same. The same what?

After. As in, between and among now

for a long time.