Found on a flyleaf: “Awarded to Fanny for an Essay on ‘What I saw during my trip to the orphanage’. Sept 19111
The art book when I find it
is pristine with dust, a gray snowfall,
only the flurries fall upward in the sunlight
defying gravity, defying the orderly Milky Way
of my existence, its fixed planetary motions
with phantoms of metaverses like motes
in my eyes: Marcel² says, “leave it under the bed”:
but the plank is in his eye: this dust is
important as marble, a tombstone in the tundra
of which I am custodian, and I hate the gloved hand
that gave it and know the open hand that received it
and I would not disturb the fixed leaves
that shelter the child who murmurs “dada”
then “rosebud”
then dies.
1Inscription (with edit) from The Book of Inscriptions Project
2French artist/writer Marcel Duchamp let dust collect in a spot under his bed (he called it “growing dust”), instructing his maid not to clean it.
For Shay's Word Garden List - Ghost Eaters (choose at least 3 of 20 words) and dVerse's MTB (pick one of the five inscriptions given as an epigraph.
Dreams from a Pilgrimage 
Thank you for the interesting post!
Joanna
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Thank you Joanna for reading and commenting. 🙂
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Your note about the flyleaf makes me imagine the story that must lie behind those words. Wow. A very intriguing poem. Your closing lines are AMAZING. Wow.
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So glad it caught your imagination Sherry. Thank you!
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A tragic ending
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Much unhappiness on all counts.
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Indeed 🥲
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a wonderful poem Dora – the voice here speaks with the lightest of emphasis on the profound, making it a joy to listen to. Loved these lines:
“is pristine with dust, a gray snowfall,
only the flurries fall upward in the sunlight”
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Appreciate your generous comment, Laura, thank you.
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The elegaic mood of this is paradoxically lush and austere, and in its way reflects that surreal spirit of the incongruous of the artists mentioned. Dust in the sunlight, dust covering our works, the dust we are. This left me feeling wistful, sad for something lost or about to be lost. A very fine poem.
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Thank you for your acute reading and feedback, Joy, particularly your reflection on “that surreal spirit of the incongruous” in art and in life, which is very much a part of what I intended. 🙂
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Sometimes I can’t comment right away and have to come back again later, as I’m doing now. I have read this about a dozen times and see some new detail more clearly each time. As Hedge has observed, your poem is rich with a feeling of saudade, of things not finished, or finished and not to be disturbed. I am fascinated with the gloved and open hands and wish I knew what the story was behind that. I see this as written by the maid, who may have understood the painter better than he understood himself. Or so I read.
You might find it interesting that my relative was a painter and muralist named Edward Emerson Simmons. My father, born in 1912 (I was his late life child!) knew Edward personally and shared some of what he told him with me. He said our family (my father’s side) are an odd bunch but seem to find one thing each is good at and to make a success of doing.
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The artistic vein runs deep in your family, Shay, unsurprisingly. “Odd” is an adjective that seems to adhere to the creative and as I’ve gotten older I’m learning it’s more a badge of honor (even courage) than not. Thank you so much for taking the time to engross yourself (a compliment in itself) in this piece which is a puzzle that reassembles itself for me each time I look at it. I agree with you that the maid is the persona. I like yours and Hedge’s characterization of it as a saudade, and that the allusions work towards that. Definitely what I was going for. 🙂
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So many details and references in this poem to love and be delighted with. The rosebud reference that to me always is something that makes me think of a childhood lost in the Citizen Kane movie…
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Glad you caught that allusion … What an unforgettable classic!
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Thank you Björn. 🙂
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That’s a beautiful painting by Grimshaw. I like your expression “a tombstone in the tundra”.
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Thank you Frank. And I agree, Grimshaw’s paintings are lustrous, especially his townscapes. Quite the contrast to the Dadaists that succeeded him and his fellow Victorians.
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Love this poem, Dora, especially the third stanza, and love the images you’ve chosen too 🙂
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I’m so glad you enjoyed it, Sunra. Grimshaw has long been a favorite of mine, such an atmospheric painter of cityscapes especially. 🙂
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This is just exquisite: “a gray snowfall, / only the flurries fall upward in the sunlight //
defying gravity, defying the orderly Milky Way / of my existence” So much of the poem as well, an ode to dust and the great artists of that milieu. Nice to land on “Rosebud,” LOL!
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Thank you Randall!
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