Self-Portraits

Johannes Vermeer Self-Portrait

Johannes Vermeer Self-Portrait

[The Art of Painting, 1666, Oil on Canvas,

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna]

‘The illusion I wanted to create was that of reality’ – Ibsen

So far my largest trial -

for the beast’s year

that followed in my blood

to staunch the flow -

a portrait of my back

as being merely a part of how I paint

my own enigma into art

reacts to what it sees

in undeniable black.

Nor skin nor eye

but what is merely visible from there

behind itself included yet

excluded as must a man like me

of mirrors and light’s grace and all the

careful detail of my little

(no camera obscura

as you noticed)

fragile world of

letter writers, lady instrumentalists,

back alley stitchers, cooks,

nothings

(you think it easy?)

A masterpiece must counterfeit the real

(out of a line of crooks and cheats -

great uncle forged his money

as did I from my inheritance

will pay the garment tax)

and stop the crowded narrative

(of thirteen children,

of a Catholic wife seduced

into her mother’s house)

to crowd me back into the pure

that suddens backward through the prism

to the real.

Thus I can hide the struggle

with so much matter -

grinding, mixing, adding the sicative,

et cetera, all the labour of it

that can grant perfection.

No line but light in solids

tricks the willing mind

into the restful lie

of passions now becalmed.

So look up close and catch

the matter hiding the real

behind its varnish

caught by me where,

trapped like a fly

in amber

its perfection

lives.