Memoir

Out of the shadows from the lamp at night we’d see
The lines of Braque on the walls,
Or where the shadow cut across the books, the free
Formality of a pink Matisse;
My eye recalls the moustache of Rousseau
Above my lover’s smile,
The light delineates them so,
Each innocent of style.
Plaiting my hair the room would be at peace.

I recall him now, my lover of the academy;
How the page of my darling’s ever changing choice
Would be open to some unraveled evanescent verse,
As he grumbled on, a man alone with his voice.
Oh, not one word in an ordinary way
To tell us meanings reverse,
That the back of the hand is stranger
To the palm of the hand. Just the unmindful voice
Taking its single journey divorced from danger.