Muse Not Muse

(Gwen John, Painter, Rodin’s Model)

Cinnabar, Phoenician red, wild
         geranium—to be played against
         olive and smoky lime, a
mercury luster: quicksilver
         the soul, most visible
         in the empty room. Who saw

the wicker armchair open like Danae
         to the cataract of citrus
         light? Whose coat lies flung
across the frame? The Parisian garret
         window gapes ajar, the bare
         floor crackles, book

lies torqued along its spine,
        splayed. “I don’t pretend
        to know anybody well: people
are like shadows to me and I
        am a shadow.” Her job: years
        in an empty room, to wait.

The woman waits, the Master breaks his cloud-
        cover unaccountably,
        then she stands torqued
along her spine, splayed, in plaster
        rises, an immortal
        armless Muse turning

from him who turns from her. “Oh what
        inquietude: eternal
        adieu?” Raw sienna,
Payne’s gray, Naples yellow: she spins
        her color wheel, grips
        her brush. No adieu

but to twist in the Master’s ever-vanishing
        embrace, to strike his poses,
        plead, then lead
the long, fevered, scumbled hours alone.
        “Make your harmonies, make
        your harmonies.” Her brush

        her own. And when the god, exhausted, dies,
        she reigns already
        in her vacancy:
has rendered from sunset, salmon, ashen-blue,
        “Method: snowdrop in earth—
the road—the pink flower—“

“We must go on with our mysterious work.”