from A Treatise on Painting

. . . 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