FOUR CHAMBERS TO THE HEART


September the 16th
The year of our lord 1624

To the magnificent master painter Antonio Van Dyck
From La Donna Sofonisba Anguisola, Palermo.

My beloved and respected friend,
Today your present arrived.
The little ebony queen of chess
brings back voices of youthful times.
My cackling sisters and me,
giggling, squabbling,
seeking out the new rules of this royal game.

We were delighted to find the queen,
was now made free to wander
where ever her whim would take her.
While Her King,
was confined to his own and the adjacent squares.

You championed me like I championed you
to witness and to study the beauty
of anatomy and astronomy and philosophy.

Of old, I have been granted glimpses
in the most wondrous of writings.
I have shared bread and wine
with the most luminous of luminous scholars.
I have touched bones and stones and sculls
and furs and feathers and I am a woman.

A nigh new book was bequeathed to me.
The book was about the fabric of the human form.
The book changed the human heart
it gave it a new shape
it gave it 4 chambers
it sealed all the holes in the walls
I have examined it.

I made myself habituated with
the perpetual revolutions
of the celestial bodies
around our bright blinding sun
I was always a woman.

Palermo, September the 19th

I painted the early evening sky
Stroke by stroke by stroke
thinner than air
reaching out
to a brighter side.

I painted my face from the mirror
and from the mirror I saw the mirrors in my eyes
and from the tiny mirrors in the mirror
I painted the room and the light in the eyes of the face
I painted the world entering the eyes
and when I was done,
when the face and the eyes were finished
It was alive.

Perpetually I drew
I painted what I drew.
I drew all the sisters
I painted all the sisters
I repainted all the sisters
And when they wanted no more
I drew myself again and again and again.

My old eyes, now all but blind
have shown me how to work.
They have shown me how
to find faces and human forms
in the whirlpools of lines.

Like me you search for the heart in the face.
You seek the fire and the breath.
The wonder is found
when the painted face
is looking at you just as hard
as you find yourself looking back.

Palermo, September the 27th

My beloved friend,
I am told streets are strewn with bodies.
The black plague is raging among us.
We die by hundreds by day and by night,
left festering in shallow graves
dug mostly by bare hands.

My dear beloved friend,
I beg of you,
do not come.
Do not venture out.
Let the fumes of death not catch you.

Allow me to send you my words by messenger.
Allow me to protect you
Allow me to protect myself from loosing you.

The breath of my core is leaving me.

My note to you
is escorted by the bluest of stones.
It is my colour for goodbyes
my gift of reverence.

Sadly no words of mine
can shield you from ill faith.
May my trust in your genius
strengthen you as to forever be bold.

I am grateful for the time we have shared.
You have escorted me back to my youth,
on a journey to far-off lands and distant shores.