Judith E. Johnson

A READING GLASS

i still hold it against you

Even though i’ve already told you

this, and we thought we’d canceled it, that in

the Memling Museum in Brugge, when i looked at

Christ’s face through a reading glass you seemed to sneer

At such a concern for mere technique. That night,

drinking beer, you and i and our friend, he said what

to you was fact clearly stated, to me wit:

Memling spent all that care

to paint what was not there.

In this, if you like, i’ll grant you the argument, admit

i take the wit and not the thought, as if

the surface and texture mattered. But it wasn’t

the brushstrokes or anything near technique i paid attention then / close to worship / more

a fidelity to what he knew, the labor

not unlike what we do,

when he squinted in candlelight through a reading glass

that seemed to bend all he saw. He looked through that blur

the eye unaided will make of what’s there, set

down each braided hair

on the Lady’s head, made

each jewel a mirror to throw the invisible

real world of his painting back at you, each tear

a mirror, each pearl of sweat on the Crucified Man’s

forehead, he gave you

by straining his sight what’s there for the eye to see

though the brain in its cold sufficiency

to imagined, diminished truth can’t take it

without a reading glass and humility.

That was your world you walked past, held away from you

as if detail were a corruption, as if to tell me,

take it away, that braided

hair will spoil

my purity.

If i’m not fair to you, hurt you, anger you,

i hurt myself, but what else to do if not

set down all i saw, as he did,

the lines tangled, crossing,

recrossing, and clear, clear

through my reading

glass?

Copyright 1972 by Judith Johnson Sherwin, copyright 1998 by Judith E. Johnson

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