April 4. What is life with a painting? That is our subject for today. I love the way our prompts transport me to times and places I had forgotten; this is not a very good one, as in time and place, not the prompt.
I bought the print of Egon Schiele’s Woman in Green Stockings while on a solo weekend in London, it stopped me in my tracks, it speaks loudly and yet keeps silent secrets. I bought her during a difficult time in my life and reading about how Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi viewed the cycle of the moon as a metaphor for the human condition, I have tried to blend the painting and artist’s concept.
Through Venetian blind windows she’s seen,
Broken and scarred,
As slices of the moon in a rippling stream
She does not bleed from her glass made wounds,
Nor does she cry,
Or flood the air with a scream that fills the room.
She was my last dream of being me,
Fragment of hope,
Eclipsed by none, my own auburn Selene.
Drained, lifeless, on a flat lunar tide,
Barrel emptied.
Even the saline seas of my eyes had dried.
How much more can this tired, frail mind take?
Please; don’t leave me.
Not here. Not on this bed cliff willing to jump.
I’ll put you back together again,
You cannot me.
But you can watch me sleep, and help soothe my pain.
Missives & Musings 
I adore Schiele’s work, and I love where the image took you, Graham. I especially enjoyed ‘broken and scarred, as slices of the moon in a rippling stream’ and the lines:
‘Drained, lifeless, on a flat lunar tide,
Barrel emptied.’
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There are gorgeous lines in this poem, Graham. I am curious, where do you hang the Woman in Green Stockings? 🙂
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Hi Gloria, sorry for the late reply, I somehow missed this message. She used to hang in my living room but she made my eldest daughter uncomfortable, so she then retired to my bedroom where she had the unfortunate accident that is the story behind the poem.
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