Mona Lisa

the name does not name,
eludes meaning
through ambivalence of the smile,
certified,
famous,
condescendingly compassionate,
a bite of curious disgust
downs the airs...

still, i wonder if the old cliche
that it is Leonardo I see
before me in Louvre,
is really something...

for it seems to me that it is very much
someone who is painted
as a mirror reflection, yet
superimposed upon that image,
another, female -- gentle and tolerant,
almost a nun...

and if it is Leonardo i see,
then may i presume that he was
the lover of the merchant
whose wife he spent four
years painting, who must have tolerated
his little peculiarity with
a distant understanding?

the mysterious mist,
the fungal rising of natural matters
travels, the hauntingly lyrical
landscape
to offset the smooth diagonal of
the woman's posture, askance
peering at the viewer who is
either Leonardo or the merchant?

the face in which painter and
painted are one,
the citation of Leonardo's desire
and the irony of his choices...
impressions, pressure of the
tension elides
through winding roads,
quiet natural modes,

and the breasts, they are medieval,
suddenly flattened, over which
the painter's stance o'ertakes,
even more than the usual manners
of his portrayals,
for it is very much how a painter would pose
with his pallet,
the way it is painted...

his women always have
a peace that is beyond understanding,
a halo around them
as if they were bodhissattvas
alternately laughing or crying
at aspects of masculine frailty...

(what holds them together
as clothes of rain, is
a perfect balance between
emotion, spirit, and intellect --
these women whom I would
suffer art to meet)

as he proudly gazes at the viewer,
i can even divine
a sublime humbleness
which Rembrandt would later
cite,
as something arising
from
yours...