Toward Dieppe
(for Gwen John 1876-1939)
Where did you cook your meals
in that rented room with ochre walls,
a table beneath the window,
a few books, small easel and paints?
There is the umbrella
for Parisian rains
through which you dashed
clutching a baguette and two eggs
after a day standing naked,
before students who, charcoal in hand,
stared--form, volume, values.
And when you disrobed
for him--Rodin--
did lust flame the passion
of your vision,
float you solitary on a palette
of persistence and genius
through 63 years?
Toward the end
you owned a little house
in Meudon on rue Babie
where, among cats, you drew,
prayed, gardened and until
that lonely death in Dieppe,
kept notebooks:
faded dew-berries
white of waterplant
greens of primroses
nuts. faded roses.
Susan Pope 3/2013
painting by Gwen John
