Morrocan Garden

Marokkanischer Garten - Morrocan Garden 50 x 50 cm acryl painting by Karin Goeppert

OLD MASTER ITALIAN PAINTING

is a lot about fabric and

its folded textures. Hair as a formal

statement mounted on what is

so much more than pretty  

in its aura of self-acceptance

that we can only accept it with misgivings—we’ve

known a few people with that dark magic: sign

up for my religion, they seem to say, or

turn away at your loss; either way you’re screwed—

and the pain of sorrow so exquisitely  

arranged in a Botticelli Madonna

that it could be the visual definition of

radically decelerated ecstasy. She looks like

she has a very bad cold, but you know

it’s more than that. She, this post-pagan,

strawberry blond Cassandra—she’s seen something awful.   

Here’s what makes her post-: she gives in too easily, no struggle.  

Too much pity and you’re lost; not enough you’re not nice.

Either way someone’s screwed. Outside  

a woman’s disappointment with you is text book,

almost clinical. What her face seems to express 

as you play soccer with a plastic coffee cup—

and which goes a shade darker

when you glance up just in time to glimpse a 

bright-skinned girl skateboarding by, glimpse turning

into elaborate, open-mouthed, speechless desire—

could render the stupid thoughtful for a second.