A Treatise on Painting

By Anna Rabinowitz

. . . some days ago I saw the picture of an Angel who, in making the Annunciation, seemed to be trying to chase Mary out of her room with movements showing the sort of attack one might make on some hated enemy; and Mary, as if desperate, seemed to be trying to throw herself out of the window. Do not fall into errors like these.  

                                                                                                — Leonardo da Vinci

It is time to speak of the lies
            of images, omissions, insertions—
 
            imitations of reality,
 
                        but whose reality, Leonardo?
 
     For you she’s in nature—
 
                 you’ve lavished so much attention
                                      on rock formations along your raised horizon
                 varieties of grass in the lawn
                 cloud convocations
 
                          and the shadow the archangel casts
            obliterating most of what’s imagined growing there
 
                        and she, lovely, composed—“great grace of shadows and of lights is added
to the faces of those who sit” beside the darkness of brown plasterwork—her right arm
almost deformed, too far forward,
 
                        reaching out at an impossible angle—
 
                                                FOR WHAT
 
—Botticelli, Campin, van Eyck—for you
 
she’s indoors all decked out in luscious silk and satin,
surrounded by finery—tied-back drapery, carved benches,
a rug or tiled floor, loggias
and archways beyond her wildest ken
windows revealing hortus conclusi and winding paths
              slogging toward the sea

And what of all those blues and golds, so rife with wealth
 
            in her life there’s only red from madder juice
            and yellow from kaolin clay
                        and a linen shift all frayed
 
The truth also is a small opening high up on the wall
A floor that’s hard-packed dirt
And beyond the room, villagers working the fields,
donkeys dragging threshing boards over newly harvested wheat
 
            AND EVERYWHERE, INSIDE AND OUT, WORLD-MOTHETING DUST
 
                                         For all of you
this is an event reduced to a book she cannot read
a lily she does not smell
a lectern she never owned
 
She might as well comb her hair with a stiletto heel
Make of her body a cloud of white tulle
Carry a watering can and wear shapely wooden clogs
Fake glamour in a black bare-back gown
Crouch on the ground flipping coins
Pop a pogo stick between her legs and levitate
 
                          SHE COULD BE ANYONE            ANYWHERE             ANYTIME
 
 
She could be sitting in her slip, bored,
bored to death, the intercom
image appearing out of nowhere,
announcing a stranger
 
            (prima materia, take a deep breath
 
            (for divinity to enter the world,
                        your mystery must be experienced
 
Her eyes will go wide, not expecting this
 
Her ears have encountered only silence
 
            and the soft moan of a dove
                        (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
 
The trees thin
The cumulus sky crackles ever so quietly
Somewhere a rainbow breaks
 
            too loud now
                        too strident
 
                        He’s gotten in
 
Hail comes in pellets
            (heavy hitters
 
            She will be patient
            and hear him out
                        though what she really wants is to get back under the covers
                        that are damask, but a lie—
                                    (rough-hewn flax is what she’d have)
 
Or she could be blending a batch of myrrh
and roses to deodorize the foul
stench of the room that opens out
not on a vista of budding poplars
but on sewage,
piles of it
come to rot at the side of the road
just there, in front of her door
            where broken planks of wood lean
            and bleating sheep wait to be herded up the hill
 
But here’s this guy breezing in
 
                             (Titan, El Greco paint his feet unplanted on the ground
                                         (is he preparing for a quick getaway
                                                     or must he be higher on the picture plane
                             (Tintoretto catches him in mid-flight, a show-off, he
                             (Martini and Crivelli force him to his knees
 
The breeze may be the whisper of something
              she is in danger of losing
 
                             (the breeze may be her destiny
 
 
or his feathers could begin to moult
                             (transaction of feathers,
                             (light as a feather
                                                in the face of all that dust she can’t escape
 
or she could cringe at wings,
                                  voracious, unfurled,
trying to scoop her up, knock her down,
drown her in their soft pile,
 
snuff out any NO she stashes in her mind,
or the wind could whip his feathers
and blow the townsfolk quickly to her side
 
          (Today, she knows no one will arrive in time . . . )
 
          Certainly not those people tending their gardens,
                      (as if anyone had topiary trees
                               as Rogier van der Weyden (possibly Memling) shows
 
                                                (read fields of barley and wheat
                                                              and plows, plenty of plows
 
In his eyes, pools of light map no pollution, only flame
In hers, no flecks, no threads mar the cobalt calm
 
            until his hail scumbles their surface
 
            What is she to make of it
 
Her lids lower
 
Chrysalises, her eyes close on their private dusk
                        (she’s already seen her share of Roman crucifixions
 
            (perhaps the future is there and her eyes seek the great above
                             where son and mother will be united
            (perhaps she conjugates the months—
                                              (nine is real—
                                  (a number done on her
 
            (perhaps she dabbles with using rue to end the thing
 
                                              SHE’S GOT A CHOICE AFTER ALL
 
 
For the child she will have boundless love
 
For posterity the memory of being
 
For her life no proper translation

Copyright Credit: Anna Rabinowitz, from “A Treatise on Painting” from The Wanton Sublime. Copyright © 2006 by Anna Rabinowitz. Reprinted by permission of Tupelo Press.
Source: The Wanton Sublime (Tupelo Press, 2006)