I once saw the truth in this when, on reprinting an old poem entitled "Charcoal print", I tried (stupidly enough!) to keep a whole complex of feelings separate from a charcoal print that had evinced it. As if, ensconced in verses, the subject of the portrait hadn't really been all that "difficult to handle". And, almost a decade later, as if she'd disappeared altogether. I thought I could look with complete equanimity now on the storm that had generated it.
I will say one thing about it, however: the vision's never looked so revelatory to me almost a decade later.
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Charcoal print
I lost the blackish-white, luscious, in a word
& see now under coal eyes
lips that scowl (if charcoal lips can!), a neck stretch
She'd try to see me, too
for she's angular, keen & all that, from hairline to chin
but cruel as a crow's underwing; luscious
& neat down to a blind hem
I lost that, too
There must be something, after the carnage
in a brow's spectral ash,
or smudgy nose, at the least, to connect with
(& save me from the storms)
Can the blackish eyes have ever been right?
They weren't;
I felt the collapse
Sweetish-grey is the near absent nose, her upper lip
that didn't crush entirely,
sparing viewer but didn't let go of me, either
No wonder the many potential poets,
me among them, see her go, too, sweetish one
with black rose in each eye,
crude pasty brow
Problem is she's written in it, in blackish-white,
already a role (that of 'loved' or 'not')
you get the minute you look
Which I did & then lost
And stout skies, outside my window,
flat-bottomed & heading steadily for shore, whenever I looked,
let me know it!
Rigid, adored in charcoal, & she let me know it
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