What A Man Can Put on Canvas
The crowd is passing, passing, but the man
who’s resting on the wall is still. His eyes,
the green of quiet water, look upon
a couple come in street attire to pause
before his canvas, speak a word or two.
They’re gone. And now a single lady stops
in her career and stands before my seat.
She’s found this Dürer. He was twenty-eight
when he completed it. Out to the frame
his hair falls, brown as the fur coat he wears,
as beard and moustache. Is it not a Christ
who fills the canvas thus? Is this young man
so primed for fame, so bold? For light and shade
have taken fold and fabric and the pale
right hand that holds the coat. Beneath his gaze
the crowd mills. There are paintings on the walls
to catch the eye, to talk about; and then
come other rooms; and past them, there is Munich
to visit – bar and restaurant and church.
But Dürer’s gaze does not shift. He is looking
straight out into the room. Museum hours
have ended now. Custodians have come
with broom and bucket – lights have dimmed. The year
is almost at an end, the air is chill,
here where the Alps are foothills. What a man
can put on canvas varies. The right hand
of Dürer is long gone, though it may hold
that vanished coat, that fold. That look of his
has vanished as the dew does, though it goes
straight through my heart. Now I do not pretend
to fathom it. It lingers like a curse.
John Isbell
If you have any thoughts about this poem, John
Isbell would like to hear them
