What if the mother
is always sick,
what if for her whole life,
she is sick
— when we were children —
weren’t we
always asking: is that sleep
she is sleeping
or is it a slide toward death?
What is it
to be always in fear,
isn’t that ridiculous,
that one’s hug
or one’s moving too near
could hurt?
Isn’t that hurtful?
Don’t these thoughts
pend on a life
like a painter’s heavy impasto?
Don’t they distort
what he paints,
bending it from one
understandable realm
into the fearful next?
Seeing her in the chair,
her head atilt,
or lying on her bed,
the child’s eye
inevitably trailed
away from her being there,
followed the lines
formed by the drapery of sheets
or by the downward flow
of hidden limbs,
— gravity pulled at the eye
and fated it.
And isn’t this why
Kossoff painted
a bright red blotch
just below his mother’s left hand
— nothing structural
in its being there
— nothing in the image
or design to fix it,
— red blot
of a child’s anger —
formless,
homeless —
didn’t it wander
like a loose speck,
like an errant cyst
in a teary eye?