PATRICIA GIRAGOSIAN
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         “Portrait of Gertrud Loew”

                 (Gustav Klimt’s oil on canvas, 1902)

 No white dress
 can save you
 from the Anschluss.
 Even your folded hands,
 a penitent’s gesture,
 are not enough.
 The gossamer silk
 draped around you
 is one of several
 illusions in a
 lavish parlor that
 suspends your girlhood
 in a cage of light,
 your father’s house
 a locked gallery
 that holds teacups
 as thin as rose
 petals near a
 mirror multiplying all
 silver, the teapots
 from the Old
 Empire that your
 great-grandmother had
 arranged on her
 hall table, remnants
 of her trousseau
 that suit you
 like the blue
 ribbons beaded around
 your neck and
 bodice, streamers to
 signify containment
 and, perhaps,
 complacency so fitting
 for such a tranquil
 place, one rare world
 where the noose
 of life is
 ambiguity, such as
 the price you pay
 for perfection and
 the tenuous way
 you greet life
 here in this
 chaste rendering
 of who you
 had to be,
 your circumspect youth
 disembodied in a
 blur of white.
 Facing the easel,
 it was natural
 that your shoulders
 folded toward your
 breasts to avert
 the artist’s gaze,
 just as they
 will turn the
 moment you witness
 history’s obscenity
 one afternoon when
 stormtroops shoot
 the locks on the
 French doors of
 your house and
 kick down the
 screen of your
 dressing room to
 pull you, napping
 from the burgundy
 velvet cushions
 you brought from
 your mother’s country
 loggia, in that instant
 which you recognize
 completely as the
 end of dreaming.
 

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