Flattered by any masterful representation

of things we knew, from Reubens's black faces

devoutly drawn, to the fountaining elation

of feathery palms in an engraving's stasis,

we caught in old prints their sadness, an acceptance

of vacancy in bent cotton figures

through monochrome markets, a distant tense

for a distant life, still, in some ways, ours.

The St. Thomas drawings have it, the taint

of complicit time, the torpor of ex-slaves

and benign planters, suffering made quaint

as a Danish harbour with its wooden waves.

And what of the world, burning outside the library,

the harbour's cobalt, every hot iron roof,

and its mongrel streets? That ordinary

alchemical indifference of youth

transformed by a page's altar, even then,

loved the false pastorals of Puvis de Chavannes,

until the light of redemption came with Gauguin,

our Creole painter of anses, mornes, and savannes,