Diane Kendig

from “Speaking of Maria Blanchard”

(Maud Sumner, her former student speaks)

"C'est fini, n'y touchez plus,"

she would sometimes say.

when I wanted to work longer on a certain canvas.

"Then take another one, and go further

on that, if you can, doing the same subject."

"Tant pis si on est malade,"

as if not sick, she struggled to earn enough.

Matisse, Claudel, and Severini used to come.

Picasso not so much, busy

with his own work.  But he was at her funeral.

She was in great pain,

and I could hear her cursing.  Maria

slipped away quietly in my arms.

I still have bits of her furniture.  Friends

have said to me, "Why don't you get some nicer?"

I don't always tell them the reason.

*

MARIA BLANCHARD'S MOTHER

Her husband forgot her name, forgot his horse

in the woods of Santander, and , most often, forgot

their daughter, her kyphosis clear at her birth.

The beautiful wife, forgotten, ignored her daughter, too.

The refined, hurt mother, the legerdemainist

charmed the neighborhood children at her own sickbed.

From under her pillow she'd pull fruit and sparrows.

And keys!  How she'd lose them to find them

for the children's amusement: on the armoire,

behind Jaime's ear, in the mouth of the dog.

Over and over, she'd lose, then reproduce them,

trying to prove she hadn't forgotten or lost..

Marie grew smaller and smaller, her head,

sinking into her shoulders like a buoy pulled through water,

away from the taunts of the townsmen who thought

touching lottery tickets to a cripple would bring good luck

"Only in Spain!" she cried, and left for Paris.

She returned with cubism, and turned it in later

for her own vision: the lost, sick, and lonely

in searing colors laid on with a knife,

so stylized her mother even got the point.

Then came the famous, The First Communion, then

her last scenes, all mothers and children.  A dry search

for God, Lorca said, "no angels, no miracles."

 

The First Communion by Maria Blanchard

TO MY SISTER

Now that I can’t speak to you any more

as we used to on Christmas Eve

or the night before the union picnic

when we’d egg each other on

later and later and collapse asleep together,

neither recalling who went first, never

speaking and not getting an answer.

All your life you faced life as we did

as children, lifting our faces

to the pelting rain of the Fourth of July flood.

We lived on a hill, never knew anything

but the rich slick touch of soft water

on our cheeks and chin in the dark.

So that last night I stretched

between two chairs, to be close

in case you called out one last time

And in the end, it was I who called

in a whisper and I keep whispering and whispering

these late nights, listening for your breath

to see if at last we can rest easy.

LEAVE-TAKING IN SWAMPSCOTT

         for Nancy and Richard, after Li Bai

One guest has left for the north,

the Atlantic continues to crash above the east wall,

you kneel over your dying cat and I stand behind.

Good-byes said last night, I think to back out,

leaving you with this grief, but you stand,

turn your teary face my way, west, hundreds

of miles I will be thinking of all the farewells

there are in the world. Siri, sweet mutt, bends

in her deep downward facing dog

as we bow our heads and part. 

© Diane Kendig

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