"Father hatches in the upsweep flame of her reddish blond, the restraint of her sober hair band"
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Bei
Dao
A Portrait Study by Rubens
Clara
Serena, the Flemish master’s
young
innocent, gazes straight
at
unknowns. Yet her eyes, two
end-tapered,
plump little lemons,
open
their lids along different arcs:
twin
Claras, each one tempted
after
her own amusement.
Father’s
trying to hold
an
afternoon shadow pressed
to
the cheek of his daughter’s
goblet
face. She sniffs oil on canvas
—part
tar, part cheese, part kelp
smell.
But obliges, bearing up
her
broad collar. Starched
scratchy
to her neck, it fans big
like
a peacock tail bleached white.
It’s
so hard (Father hatches in
the
upsweep flame of her reddish
blond,
the restraint of her sober
hair
band) to sit still. Her love
and
fear of Papá worries her
like
a bitten thumb. Yet she works
with
her whole forehead
to
think her way out
the
high open window (that
four-corner
glint in her eyes).
Down
below her, dirty boys
kick
a pig’s bladder
along
the cobblestones of Antwerp.
Closer,
less scary, is the dolls’
playhouse
Father’s built her, safe
amid
ornamental garden mazes.
She
longs after her painted-ivory
playmates:
their handclasp size,
their
rooms, cross-sectioned just so
around
them. So soon a model,
is
Clara Serena predisposed to fill
roles
the matchbox bedchambers
and
thumbback chairs presume
only
for her figurines? Will she assume
her
little maids’ chesspiece preciousness?
Their
dressed-up immobility?
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