To make it right
Vermeer painted
then painted over this scene
a woman alone
at a table
the cloth pushed back
rough folds at the edge
as if someone had risen in haste
abandoning the chair beside her
a wineglass nearly empty
just in her reach
Though she been called idle
and drunken
a woman drowsing
you might see in her gesture melancholia
Eyelids drawn
she rests her head in her hand
Beyond her a still-life white jug bowl of fruit
a goblet overturned
Before this a
man stood in the doorway
a dog lay on the floor
Perhaps to exchange
loyalty for betrayal
Vermeer erased the dog
and made of the man
a mirror framed by the open door
Pentimento
the word for a painter’s change of heart
Pentimento
revision on canvas
means the same as remorse after sin
Were she to rise a mirror behind her
the woman might see herself as I did
turning to rise from my table
then back as if into
Vermeer’s scene
It was after the quarrel
after you’d had again too much to drink
after the bottle did not shatter
though I’d brought it down
hard on the table
and the dog had crept from the room to hide
Later I found a trace
of what I’d done
bruise on the table
the size of my thumb
Worrying it
I must have looked as she does
eyes downcast
my head on the heel of my palm
In paint
a story can change
mistakes be undone
Imagine
Still-Life with Father and Daughter
a moment so far back
there’s still
time to take the glass
from your hand
or mine
