The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org
by Eve Rifkah
SUZANNE FALLS IN LOVE
A man paints
in the fields
I watch through the window
make excuses to walk
Oh so lightly
a glance just a glance
at his canvas.
I know this man,
Andre Maurice's friend.
He comes and goes
glancing my way
he sees not just
trees not just sky touching earth
He sees me waits for me to stride
out my door after my dogs
their leashes yank me into his eyes
I feel the tightening of the bonds.
I call to him one day
You can't paint the earth
the same way you paint the sky.
I send him a letter
Thursday 23 September 1909
I forgot yesterday that I have my model
On Friday and Saturday. I must rearrange
Our visit to the museum for next Tuesday
If you can, come and call me as arranged.
And I waited
his image merging with my model's
leg curve arm lifted
What am I looking at?
23, younger than my son!
Yet how can that matter
we touch and touch
never enough.
All the men before were not this man.
ANDRE UTTER FALLS IN LOVE
She seemed to dance rather than walk.
How could I not love her?
She had something of Amazon and fairy.
I begged Maurice to introduce us.
She seemed so pleased.
Was it only that Maurice had a friend?
And what of her husband a well-placed man
stockbroker and banker?
I a mere electrician.
Yet I feel her glance
Ah she enters my dreams
I know not day from night
real from unreal.
I set my easel outside her window
oh dear God
she asked what I was working on
wants to see my painting.
A self-portrait yet now I see myself in dark
next to her brilliance.
I want to stretch myself on her canvas
have her paint me in large strokes
feel her hand
color my life
awake
(Lines in italics are quotes from Andre and Suzanne. Suzanne Valadon, 1865-1938, was a famous model and artist. Andre Utter, also an artist, was her second husband. Maurice Utrillo, known for his scenes of urban Paris, was her son.)
MAURICE PAINTS BLEAK AND LONELY
avenues empty
but for a few faceless smudges
wafting specters up narrow streets.
all the windows empty
not a curtain flutters or
pulled back
all eyes vanquished from these
streets funneling bottom edge up
to dead stop wall blocked
doors black slits.
These walls four-sided or just facade
propped from behind with heavy beams
holding all the walls framing
my son's world sunk
into canvas into some
place here not here
empty and full
these streets
under leaden skies
this city Montmartre
distilled in his visions
as village as once was
not now not now.
We remove Maurice from city straight
from angled from his streets
and cafes where he fills on wine
he picks up his brushes in country
verdant bird cry alive
paints again again
the streets Montmartre
in his room postcards line the walls
he never leaves never carries easel and paint
the critics taunt Maurice paints Paris from postcards
I reply Some painters paint from nature
and produce postcards; my son paints from postcards
produces masterpieces.
(Note: Lines in italics are quotes from Suzanne Valadon, mother of Maurice Utrillo.)
SELF-PORTRAIT AT 66
It's not just that the bones ache
flesh becomes unbecoming
sags and pulls with each gravitational
turn here I have dressed my neck
in amber beads my eyes still
midsummer blue while the lids
fall in autumnal droop
I resign myself to be who I am
no longer pretty no longer young
on the streets heads turn
for the artist not the enchantress
so be it
see out the window behind my right shoulder?
it is still summer clouds pivot over blue
I use blue in the shadows under my breasts
At 18 I paint myself austere
thinking I would be beautiful always
a midnight blue dress tight to my neck
I paint myself at 48 with the bloom
of youth and love still shining
my body firm and sensual
my dress dropped below my breasts
at 59 I slash the canvas in a rage
nothing beautiful anymore
fame is casting eyes on Maurice
over me fights with Andre tear
my heart who am I here?
now I have grown beyond sexuality
the raison d'etre in France I have grown old
I paint myself winter
no other woman dares document time
with her own flesh
no other woman strips the layers of convention
to aging bone heavy and weary
(Note: Suzanne Valadon was the first woman artist to paint herself aging.)
TRANSFORMATION
The artists call me Maria
dropping Clementine
turning the eei of Marie into an eai.
Degas calls me his Terrible Maria.
I become sea-nymph, virgin, muse, goddess
For Puvis de Chavannes.
In The Grove Sacred to the Arts and Muses
I inhabit all the ladies, curve of my hip on one
my arms holding a book in another
There I am, and again there, that's me.
found and changed stroke by stroke.
I am the nymphs and dryads in Jean-Jacques
Henner's Melancholy. Even Princess Mathilde
found me beguiling. The Italians, the Czech, the Germans
and an American, they all loved me with their brushes.
Renoir did the best by me
all of Paris sees my face, my rosy skin.
I danced in place until every muscle stiff
I became the painting.
His tender hands rubbed me limber again.
You who pose in the nude for old men
you ought to be called Suzanne,
said Henri Toulouse
and so I shall.
© Copyright 2006-7 by Cook Communication
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