What happened to Howard’s portrait of you?
I wanted that painting.
Spirits helped Howard, ‘Sometimes
When I’m painting, I hear a voice, a woman’s,
Calling Howard, Howard – faint, far-off,
Fading.’
He got carried away
When he started feeding his colours
Into your image. He glowed
At his crucible, on its tripod.
How many sessions?
Yaddo fall. Woodstoves. Rain,
Rain, rain in the conifers. Tribal conflict
Of crows and their echoes. You deepened,
Molten, luminous, looking at us
From that window of Howard’s vision of you.
Yourself lifted out of yourself
In a flaming of oils, your lips exact.
Suddenly – ‘What’s that? Who’s that?’
Out of the gloomy neglected chamber behind you
Somebody had emerged, hunched, gloating at you,
Just behind your shoulder – a cowled
Humanoid of raggy shadows. Who?
Howard was surprised. He smiled at it.
‘If I see it there, I paint it. I like it
When things like that happen. He just came.’
Came from where? Mystery smudge extra,
Stalking the glaze wetness
Of your new-fired idol brilliance.
I saw it with horrible premonition.
You were alone there, pregnant, unprotected
In some inaccessible dimension
Where that creature had you, now, to himself.
As if Howard’s brush-strokes tethered you there
In a dark emptiness, a bait, an offering,
To bring up – not a man-eater, not a monster,
Not a demon – what? Who?
We watched
A small snake swim out, questing
Over the greenhouse dust – a bronze prong
Glistening life, tentative and vital
As a snail’s horn, lifting its flow
Magnetically towards – ‘Beautiful!’
That’s what I cried. ‘Look, Howard, beautiful!
So intense it’s hypnotic!’ Howard laughed.
Snakes are snakes. ‘You like it,’ he said,
‘Because it’s evil. It’s evil, so it thrills you.’
You made no comment. Hardly a week before –
Entranced, gnawing your lips, your fingers counting
The touches of your thumb, delicately
Untangling on your fingers a music
That only you could hear, you had sat there,
Bowed as over a baby,
Conjuring into its shrine, onto your page,
This thing’s dead immortal doppelgänger.