— After Dance in the Country, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in the Musee d’Orsay
In the Land of Pleasant
Living: that’s what
the old-timers called
our state of turf and
thoroughbreds, innocent
poaching of threatened
resources with wire
hangers and chicken
necks; a bounty beneath
the surface if you waited
all afternoon amid thickening
grief of intangible damage;
I dared to imagine days
in the country for us,
dances of unfocused
desire; a weekend at
a beach hotel without
the domestics struggling
over the brittle tip
we’d have to leave
after a riot of skin
and sun violence.
Meanwhile, in the attic
apartment, on those
nights when one mistake—
burnt sausage or meat shrunken
in the pan, my long hair garroting
the sink and shower—did not lead
to a brutal lecture, he watched
as I cleaned, particulate matter
from the major thoroughfare
below us that always
managed to find our level.
When no amount of bleach
or paint could soothe our
sense of exteriors, we tried
posters, affixed putty to their
corners, expecting them to
effortlessly hover. But one
Renoir refused, peeled away
again and again, as if a bandage
cheapened by exposure to
the elements. In one valiant
swoop he tore it down
the middle, balled it up,
flung it out the window;
because he could not countenance
a couple swaying in place,
stillness committed to color;
a grace of days free of his will,
the dissonance to be renewed
tomorrow.
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