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Transfiguration, 1995 and 2014
by
David Twombly |
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We glanced at the painted image
For only a few seconds
Before you led me out the gallery door
Toward the Tube station.
On the way back to our summer campus home
We discussed something that seemed important
Though, nineteen years on,
I remember no words,
Just your unexpectedly taking my hand
As we entered the jagged crosswalk,
And then, just as abruptly
Letting it go for all time
Six days later as we departed
For our respective
And mutually exclusive states, homes, lives.
But I still recall Ophelia
Surrounded by vibrant green brush,
Reeds, moss, leaves
While she herself lay lifeless in the moving brook
An anchor of death
Dropped into the seemingly eternal life
Growing, flowing, blooming all around
And you,
Well, not you, really, you as I saw and see you,
The flat canvas onto which I once projected
Dark dreams, dark hopes, dark desires
All the dark drama of my twenty-three years
At which, with eyes closed or unfocused
I gazed far too often and for too long,
My midnight icon.
Today, I glanced at a painted image
For only a few seconds
Before shuffling out the door
Down the steps from the narthex.
But in the chiaroscuro of the churchyard's tree canopy,
I recalled the otherworldly blue of the mandorla
The bewildered look of the prostrate followers
And the bright garment
Of the Anchor of Life, of Eternal Life
Dropped into the dark, seemingly lifeless world
Of the mountain's top, of the nave's back wall;
An image to be projected someday, I might dare hope,
Onto the dark canvas of my heart.
But these are just words, words, words, without method.
I do not know what I'm saying.
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--Submitted by twomblyd on 2014-08-07.
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