1911
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| Marc Chagall, Bride with a Fan (1911), oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY |
1911
Europe is already loading the rifle backstage.
Yet here is this bride, hovering intact above history,
carried by pigment and impossible tenderness.
I look at her and think of every person
who has ever tried to protect beauty
with their bare hands.
The fan trembles slightly.
The village waits below like folded paper.
The fiddler keeps playing
against the coming century.
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This ekphrastic piece, based on the Chagall artwork above, was proposed by those anxious grooms over at DVerse Poets Pub.
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A profound poem. I discovered more with each reading. Love the village like folded paper and the bare hands projecting beauty--in contrast to the ones holding the rifles.
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