Split screen
four hundred years old:
in orbit with a blighted child, a man
reels between two women,two worlds,
no earthly tool to fathom the space between.
Rolling towards him, a waxy alien thing, corpse borne on volcanic ash pillows,
while, in a corner he
cannot reach,
the dark-haired
wife he loved,
elegant, reserved,
black
ribbons on her dress
and round her slender arm,
sits, in contemplation
and round her slender arm,sits, in contemplation
of world without
end
or hope,
not looking at him.
not looking at him.
In
mourning for them all all,
lit only by the lustre of her pearls,
her abstraction
is unbridgeable;
. he knows he will never
catch her
as she shrinks to a
tiny dot
in memory.
© Pippa Rathborne 2012
Images: details from Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of his Wife, by John Souch c.1635, Manchester Art Gallery.
