Rembrandt

Rembrandt Faces

Face frowning, fierce, feeling, florid, a fulsome landscape

The golden boy of a certain Amsterdam age

Handsome devil, while it lasted

Half-philosopher, half-performance-artist

His eyes on the spectacle of speculum

Hair frays or displays, eyes glint, gaze or sadden -

Turning the pages of his gallery catalogue.

The line of the mouth speaks a hundred moods

The search is rarely skin-deep truth to tell,

This is the question and this is the answer full frontal

Dutch landscapes brought indoors, to candlelight.    

I, so, oh so isolated here in the old mirror

With shaving brush or tortoise-shell comb,

Face familial familiar and not any younger, yet young

As this morning: tongue, teeth, eyebrows, darn cheek.

The story goes on, resolutely less Narcissus

Thinking of another, you and others, out from isolation

Who together made this face just who it is.

Eye sag, here ear hair, holy moley, furrowed forehead

It hardly seems a moment since that moment

I broke also down isolation into failsafe friendship

Had all the answers, hair all question-marks.

Face (August)

Faces in the morning, ready to enter the train. Their beauty alone is enough, in the sunlight. Faces pent up with some knot of thoughts I will never know. Faces resigned to Friday or fickle August, sunny one moment, rainy the next. Well-washed and combed, they stand out in the crowd, each one of them. They enter the train, find seats or bunch up. Faces keen for their screen and thumb. Faces still mildly asleep, a couple of them. Faces in repose, closed books. Faces, almond-like, smiling at the contained beauty of Jolimont Station. Faces I will see next week.

Face (March)

[Portrait] Eyes, that have read uncountable words, retained books, seen things we’ve never seen, watched everywhere, laugh still at childhood view of the same sea. Mouth, that’s said wrong things at the right time, right things at the wrong time, and so on, and who of us hasn’t. Ears heard even music of celestial night, the very best instruction followed usually, unutterable gossip, and like us their fair share of crapola. Hair, that’s been combed every day every way, what to do with it, the agreed routine, rather like us, rainbow roots even, but still it will snow before March.