The Dead Mother’s Last Review
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| Edvard Munch, The Dead Mother (1899) |
The Dead Mother’s Last Review
Munch painted grief, then grief grew legs,
and crawled around the room.
His mother died; the rumors lived,
and death acquired a womb.
They say the bed remembered her,
the walls retained the score.
Art critics came to pick the bones
and charged admission at the door.
The painting stares. The dead don’t blink.
The living do, instead.
We pay good money to feel worse
about being happy we’re not dead.
Perhaps the dead are better off.
No critics, no encore,
no relatives explaining what
you ought to be sad for.
Munch knew the family business:
you inherit more than genes.
Sometimes all your mother leaves you
is a room that she never cleans.
And history, that ghoul in gloves,
will pick a wound to dress.
The dead mother gets immortality.
The living? They get less.
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So true.. but the mother might be living through Munch and now through us. We may identify both with the mother or the child in the painting.
ReplyDeleteYet, the mother, having recieved immortality from the painter lives
ReplyDeleteMuch love
So true, the dead mother lives on.
ReplyDelete(My dead mother appears in so many of my poems.)
I agree with all previous comments, Chris, and yes, my dead mother appears in many of my poems. I was hit by the image of grief growing legs and crawling around the room and these lines:
ReplyDelete‘Art critics came to pick the bones
and charged admission at the door’
and
‘…history, that ghoul in gloves,
will pick a wound to dress.
The dead mother gets immortality.
The living? They get less.’
“The painting stares. The dead don’t blink.
ReplyDeleteThe living do, instead.”
So much can be interpreted from so few words. Thanks for writing!