Portrait of Anna Akhmatova after Natay Altman

(second draft)

She is folded into the paint,
Concertinaed across the canvas,
Dividing the solid hardwood floor
From the artist’s fancy – a garden
Of crystalline excrescences
Reaching to the light like blooms of broken glass.

The poet sits in a chair,
A golden shawl gathered about her,
Twirled around her arms and languidly dripping
From the edge of the cushioned seat like honey.
Fingers as light and delicate as swallow bones
Lie in her lap interrupting the flow of her Prussian blue
Dress that loosely sinks from her shoulders
And sweeps round her buttock, thigh,
Cascades over her sluicing knees and falls away
Mid-calf above sooty nylons and patent shoes,
Perched on the step like ravens.

Her gaze falls beyond the frame,
As though she were considering the interval
Between paintings
With just the tug of a smile.

Her clavicle
Slices through the desolation
Of her glacial chest, pointing to
A perfect sphere -
Not a shoulder -
But a moon
Sealing the night,
Around which we all revolve.



© GB 2008