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Take a World
Jan Van Eyck, 1434-36 and books chivvy open to the place where our names leap. Then step into the temple where Mary, gown belled like a Christmas tree angel's, speaks with a real one. Their hands negotiate: Mary is asking why light curls to ribbony rainbow on the angel's back while through her own body it shoots in stiff gold arrows. The angel nods, grins. Nothing more gorgeous than their drapery-softened gesticulation, the room's blue-propped lilies and plump ottoman. It's enough to make us think they're standing in the world, two women alert to the heft of their clothes as Mary asks, "Who, me?", her eyes sliding sideways to her painter, master of distraction. She can't see Jehovah behind her, his one blazing window, though we can, we see the room's whole depth falling into light as we wait for someone not transfixed by dilemma who's standing where we are. As we wait for Joseph. Bain-Marie (St Mary's Bath)
Edgar Degas, 1885, pastel she treads all day--these are eased in a pan so shallow we see her wavery feet, the red cloth she stoops for. If this were morning in the Renaissance we'd be stomping in a doorway, befurred and blowing on our fingers as light hardened in jewelled windows, pitched straight for her uterus. So thank heaven here the room is warm enough for nakedness-- a steady simmer of light spills from the artist's grip into our own where it hurts, holding, as it does, the weight of our wish that she look back before the water cools, trusting us to let her work as Degas trusts sun, the pastel lengthening his fingers, the light-spun grit he rubs over and over into her body, what she'll wash away any minute with the warmth in her hand.
Bio Note
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