(in memory of Betsy Graves Reyneau)
Ars Longa Which is crueler
Vita Brevis life or art?
Thoughts in the Peacock Room,
where briefly I shelter. As in the glow
(remembered or imagined?)
of the lamp shaped like a rose
my mother would light
for me some nights to keep
Raw-Head-And-Bloody-Bones away.
Exotic, fin de siècle, unreal
and beautiful the Peacock Room.
Triste metaphor.
Hiroshima Watts My Lai.
Thus history scorns
the vision chambered in gold
and Spanish leather, lyric space;
rebukes, yet cannot give the lie
to what is havened here.
Environment as ornament.
Whistler with arrogant art designed
it, mocking a connoisseur
with satiric arabesque of gold
peacocks on a wall peacock blue
in fury trampling coins of gold.
Such vengeful harmonies drove
a rival mad. As in a dream
I see the crazed young man.
He shudders in a corner, shields
his face in terror of
the perfect malice of those claws.
She too is here—ghost
of the happy child she was that day.
When I turned twelve,
they gave me for a birthday gift
a party in the Peacock Room.
With shadow cries
the peacocks flutter down,
their spread tails concealing her,
then folding, drooping to reveal
her eyeless, old—Med School
cadaver, flesh-object
pickled in formaldehyde,
who was artist, compassionate,
clear-eyed. Who was beloved friend.
No more. No more.
The birds resume their splendored pose.
And Whistler’s portrait of
a tycoon’s daughter gleams
like imagined flowers. What is art?
What is life?
What the Peacock Room?
Rose-leaves and ashes drift
its portals, gently spinning toward
a bronze Bodhisattva’s ancient smile.