Las Meninas
Johnmichael Simon
Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse 2008 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
Las Meninas was painted by Spanish artist Velazquez in 1656. The painting depicts a princess and her retinue in the court of King Philip IV. Three hundred years later in 1957 Pablo Picasso embarked on a project to paint his own version of Las Meninas. One large full scale black and white painting emerged plus no less than 58 smaller studies, including 14 of the Infanta princess Margarita Maria and 9 pictures of pigeons painted from his loft in Cannes. Several of these have become famous in their own right, however Picasso was never able to complete a full color painting of the whole group to his satisfaction. In the end he abandoned the project.
1.
Behold!
Life is a work of art
Painted by an unseen hand
The artist, lord, composerócall him what you will
Is the original and all who come thereafter
Interpretations, commentaries, conjecture and discussion
Coursing down the centuries, a great river of life and labor
To spill out verdant and luscious, here and here.
Painter, philosopher, theologian, musician and magician
All take their place before him.
Behold there he stands, brush in hand
Huge canvas daunting over stage.
Designer and design, his eyes see all.
All glows with inner light, suspended
In that perfect moment when
Imagination becomes reality
2.
In this tawny chamber
Brown merges to brown
And glowing calm
Where Margarita Maria poses,
Hooped and gowned
Between attending maids,
Her serene adolescence a light
That melts her frozen retinue.
Dwarf and dog prod and nod
While he, brush in hand,
Refracts the light and considers
His composition on a canvas
Framed and ribbed, large enough
To fill half a stage, its portent
Faced with richness
Of the mirrored royal couple.
See how the light shines through,
The inner lightóInfantaó
His finest work. Tonight
He dines at the King's table
3.
The idea had not conceived itself
Across my brow, yet here in this exhibition
Its eyes traced mine from every corner
Every wall, frowning or glowering they
Led me through the rose and blue
Entrancing me, confronting me and
In the end inviting me with impudence
That lured my soul, to take a breath, plunge into
This river of shape and texture flowing through
Time's mind. The water rushes by, they cried,
Come catch the sky, capture the light and fling
It on the stage, his studio is yours, come grasp
The brush, paint until your blood spurts forth
Onto the canvas.
It was then I saw the heavens before me
A checkerboard of possibilities spread across
The stage: faces and eyes, groups of figures each
Absorbed into its own bright rhythm of color,
Trees and sea (and pigeons!) with bright pecking
Beaks and roosts.
While all this time, in center stage, there stands Infanta,
All costumed in her look of pensive wisdom, her maids
Surrounding her, protected in her fancy dress of light.
Oh Margarita Maria, betrothed to your portrait,
You died at twenty-two. What could you know of History?
4.
Princesses have a way of reappearing
throughout history, like legends and fairy tales
they are passed down for centuries; especially
child-princesses, for which little girl does not dream
of being a princess? Maria was no exception.
That summer as we boated down the Tagus river
I related to her the story of Margarita Maria
how the artist who painted her had made her
so famous that people from all the world came here
to admire her beauty. Tell me again, she murmured,
eyes closed to her imaginings. How her maids of honor
dressed her in finery. I want to hear again about the
royal dog, about the court dwarf; how king and queen
admired her from the mirror. As the river drifted by,
I too floated away on a dream.
Now here I am, alone in my attic, watching the pigeons
hop along the windowsill, my pen making sketches
over the page. Margarita Maria, how beautiful you are
reflected in this warm Spanish sunlight.
5.
Maria spent a whole month dressing her princess
no plastic dolls or cut-out books for her, I painted
a tiny figurine of Margarita on a piece of board, clothed
only in her petticoats. We carefully sawed her,
sandpapered her limbs to smoothness,
mounted her on a swiveling platform.
Off Calle Manuela MalasaÒa, in a small down-steps shop
we purchased remnants of silk brocade, calamanco, damask and
organza, mostly shades of yellow but also sky blue, bright reds,
added a serious brown close to the background hue of
Velasquez's own royal chamber.
Together we set to work, snipping out bodices, skirts, sleeves and
sashes in gay industry. Fourteen dressed up Infantas emerged
including an exquisite model which we have nicknamed
Fransiscana de Paula, Maria de los Remedios
6.
Divertimento:
I can feel the serrated knife
Of wonder thrill between my ribs
As I climb the steep wooden stairs
Of this attic in Cannes to tug the rope of memory
And let the sky's somber passion fly in
Frequently there are moments
When between labors I watch
The pigeons fluttering on the sill,
Skimming and skittering
In the heavens and thus inspired, can
Hardly wait to inscribe their hues and
Patterns in the dawn light, envisage in my
Mind the star-bound logic of infinite
Variations as the Creator's hands leap
After each other and fill in one-by-one
Those flawless complementary hues
It is true, I know it is heresy
When I allow the soaring of my intellect to
Interfere with the perfectly matched
Modulations of time worn traditions;
Yet as I climb the stairs,
Behold the wonder of fast approaching
Daylight, this is the muse that overcomes me
Generations of pigeons have fluttered
From these eaves for centuries
But now I am sure the time of change
Is drawing near, when intellect will
Combine the beauty of the sunrise,
The fluttering of the pigeons
And the intense painful wonder of it all
Into one shimmering crystal collage
Linked, interweaving and perfect
One last insight and the picture will be complete
Others might pay homage, but I need
To transcribe this vision of wonder,
Capture the fluttering pigeons on
And between the weave of the canvas
7.
Last night I lay awake for hours, those
Pigeons sighing and cooing in their roosts
Sang of sadness and disappointment, repeating
Their tunes in mutterings of who, where and why.
Somewhere between witching hour and fancy
I fell into a dream. It was a ballroom, domed and
Vast where harlequin-like characters all masked,
Danced in slow circles around a revolving stage,
A carousel of horseless riders. Within their robes I saw
Slow motioned troubled faces, I recognized a few:
A dwarf danced with two maidens, a queen
Sang to a dog. On two tall ladders clowns
Climbed to the ceiling, brushes in their hands they
Swathed reds, greens and blues across the plastered
Vault, each in his own endeavor. As colors spread, remained
Unmingled, I felt, nay I knew, they were uncomfortable
With each other, while down below the dancing ceased
And in a voice of thunder, the king called outódesist!
At that the ceiling came apart in sections like broken
Kaleidoscopesóangles of color split off into a thousand
Whirling shapes and piecesólike armies they fought
For possession of each area, charging and reforming until
Again the king called outódesist, and color drenched from
Each painted face in pale confusion.
As all the cast looked upwards, fighting stopped like wounded
Clock hands until all movement froze. I stepped out on the river
and it shattered into shards of centuriesólike broken ice.
8.
And so the river rushes onwards
Bending and flowing, sometimes unseen
Across the landscape, at times it even
Vanishes underground to emerge
Years later, with the sound of caverns
In its voice. My life moves on too
From one village to next, visiting some companionsó
An old savage, a man with a hat
Sculptors, artists, cats and musketeers and
Womenómany women.
Of Margarita these days I rarely think,
Life is good and she is beautiful, perhaps
One day some young satyr may discover her again
Sitting by the river, singing her song
EpilogueóPablo's Eyes
Nosed eyes splayed all around into
what has become a legend, a semblance,
limbs twisted into rapturous concavity,
arms dancing cubes of intimate sprawl,
fruit-ripe nipple fullness, relaxed depravity
daubed over furniture of red green or orange
splashed with streaks of brown, blue and droll
all odd and clown-like in grave and questioning smiles
In all this ebullience of shape and color
it is the eyes that penetrate your heart,
your mind, your intellect, your gasp,
eyes peering all-angled, oval, opposing, geometric,
laughing into offset spread-eagled proportions,
gazing out of the canvas from whichever
patterned frown they and you find each other,
they stare at you all wisdom and pupil, those eyes
watching you from every pose and twist,
all-seeing, juxtaposed in gravity or jest
And should you penetrate their magnets, you may find
yourself penciling impressions on tablecloths
entranced by the magic of this wise old child,
your eyes obsessed with brush and mind
