YOUNG WOMAN WITH A VEIL by Auguste Renoir and Salvatore Buttaci

    Painting by Auguste Renoir, 1876

    Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994

This is not the veil I had hoped to wear.

You can take that for the God-honest truth!

This one is black; the other was white.

This is today: a time for mourning.

That was long ago.

How do you explain a life?

Mine, that is.

One summer the earth revolved 

around the two of us.

We were in love.

Together for the first time

we sat on St. Honore's Hill

and timed the sun that rose at early dawn.

At night we scanned the black sky

and from a galaxy of star lights

we chose a star for ourselves,

wished upon it almost nightly.

 

That was then: a time for dreaming.

Today on this cold November day

I wear the black veil that tells the world

for me this is a time of mourning:

one last loved one gone;

one last wrenching of the heart.

I no longer sit and watch the sun set,

nor do I look up to find again 

that long-ago star lost somewhere

in the heavens.

That was long ago; this is now.

 

At the mirror this morning

before I left the empty house 

for Papa's funeral

I looked at myself in this veil,

counted the black dots like end marks

closing all the episodes of my life

and thought:  If only I could hide forever!

If only I could wear this veil 

and behind it live my tears and broken-heartedness.

 

It is a black veil to be worn beneath a black hat.

It is worn in black times to commemorate lost life.

It is not the white veil I never wore.

The white veil of celebration, of new life,

the white veil of beginnings, not 

the black veil of endings.

You see how difficult it is to explain my life?

I tell it as though it were a tale of veils,

as if a life could be told in black and white,

as though we are whom we've lost and whom we've loved.

 

Tonight I will return to an empty house

and to a life made even more lonely now.

On the way there the carriage will pass St. Honore's Hill

where that young man and I synchronized our watches

for the coming of what he called "the new-born sun"

and applauded its appearance as if it were a first birth.

He held my hand or I held his.

He kissed my mouth or I kissed his.

"Robert," I said because I loved the sound of his name.

In my fantasies I would hear myself 

calling his name on my deathbed--my final words-- 

"Robert, Robert, Robert."

 

At summer's end the fall came and he was gone.

"I will come back for you, Marie," he said, 

"once my studies are over."

But I never heard from him again.

His promises were for the magical moment 

when we were young and in love.

I have worn the black veil too many times!

They have all gone their way--my loved ones--

and finally left me here alone and lonely.

I have worn the black veil so many times

but never the white veil,

never the long white gown, 

never the celebration,

never the time of beginnings.

 

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 The above poem first appeared in my book Impressions: 13 French-Painting Poems (Saddle Brook, NJ: New Worlds Unlimited), 24-26.

Salvatore Buttaci’s two collections of flash fiction 200 Shorts and Flashing My Shorts are both published by All Things That Matter Press and are available in book and Kindle editions at http://www.kindlegraph.com/authors/sambpoet

 

 

 

 

 

 

His new book If Roosters Don’t Crow, It Is Still Morning: Haiku and Other Poems   http://tinyurl.com/76akl73  

 

 

 

 

Buttaci lives in West Virginia with Sharon, the love of his life.