Invocation (English)
"Textures", was the word that had imposed itself upon his mind
For the coarse grey-dark and tawny fabrics draped across the ottoman
And the light tulles of the lilac dress crumpled beneath her legs
That contrasted with the gently sweetened porcelain of her skin
The rounded softness of her curves did guide the eye
From her two bare feet, up to the middle of her back and thence to the arm that lengthened her frame
He had painted her kneeling upon the worn patina of the parquet, her upper body upon the cushioned seat
In a strange posture of abandonment, as though suspended within a dream
Her auburn mane, finely rendered, did flood her body with light
And the tips of her tresses trailed upon her pallid skin
In a delicious rising of her flesh
That ran in shivers unto the roundness of her hips
Her skin did play with the light, whose gentle warmth one felt
Gleaming with the faintly marbled rose of her calves that betrayed the delicacy of her skin
To a subtle amber hue upon her hips and back
He traced upon her shoulders with the tip of his finger the strange bluish reflections beneath her hair
The precision of her features and the subtle hues he composed did carry him away
The perfect softness he had invoked, and that he timidly grazed
Was rendered so truly in her forms that it passed also into her voice
And the first sounds, as ever, did move him deeply
She recalled with a bittersweet ache, as one emerging from slumber
Her clan and her lands of peat-bogs drowned in mist
The farmstead and her cousin so merry, who had made her dance wildly
And left her collapsed with weariness in the middle of his chamber
He was not surprised by her faint accent
Nor by the somewhat antiquated turns of her phrases
Which, in small touches, light as her brushes
Did reproach him for his posture and his indecent manner
She was a woman of knowledge, a bean feasa, and her visions returned to her
And the chosen words, muffled by the sheets that hid her face
Did prophesy that the realism of his works, which with her did reach its height
Would soon threaten, by the power of his obsessions, his own identity
As others before thee
Losing soon the thread that bindeth work to waking world
Thou shalt sail strange seas toward other imaginings
Consuming little by little thy mind in poetic mirages
Confounding reality itself
Dost thou not play with borders thou dost not ken?
What knowest thou truly of the force of thine invocations
When thou dost render them with such fine precision?
If thou dost pierce with thy so-precise strokes
The veil that doth part us so finely
The selfsame veil that lieth over dreams
Who shall yet protect thee from madness?
Art thou aware of this perilous game
Of what thine obsessions may provoke
Loosed into your world so rigidly ordered
Whose dimensions are constrained by a few immutable laws?
Thy brush upon my skin is so gentle
Yet now must I persuade thee
Thou shalt soon be lost if thou persist
And the world thou knowest shall vanish with thee
Her warnings continued to weigh upon him softly
As he cleaned his brushes slowly, a knot within his belly
He so loved these almost intimate moments when they grew anxious for him and his world
Glorifying the precision of his art and his inspirations
Then almost reluctantly, borne by a lingering sorrow
Touch by touch he laid a fine coat of a fatal varnish
Immortalising that magnificent auburn nymph who had warned him
Closing, pore by pore, the doorways to the other world.
Tags :