In the Dora Maar House

(Ménerbes, France)


Picasso the matelot, his Colt cocked,
Amiably inert in the photo
From Houston’s museum studio,
Stares, inured, from his cell of glass.
And Dora, Red Dora, is signed in his hand:
Luminous Proteus, cut to the quick, here held.

This gorgeous attic of the world,
Cicadas in the pines, this red-tiled roof,
This massive joist, veined knobby pine
Ramming the ceiling end to end,
Cross-tied, lit windows stitched, stone-arched,
Make me an insect intellect
Bumbling and humming. Hear, my wings rasp.
My Queen, the dormant one, is gone
Deep in the rust of the charmed locks.