This is a poem I wrote many years ago about one of my very favorite Degas paintings, Ballet Class. What is so remarkable to me is that for a school French project, my son Patrick, age 15, drew/painted his own rendition of the painting...not knowing my attachment to it. I felt that his art and my poem might go well together!
LETTER TO DEGAS
Just as we strain to recall
dreams upon waking, I keep
returning to your Ballet Class
struggling for clues to
secrets I know you alone claim.
Unlike Pissarro or Monet, you shun
sunlight, scenic green, moon-white
on water. Haunting the dim, gas-lit
rehearsal hall, filled with dancers
at work, you found the secret that kept
your brush stirring over arched torsos,
arms coated in sweat, fingers aching
in their perfection.
(Without effort, we witness the beauty
of first snowfall, autumn leaf-changing,
the sea-tide skimming the shore)
Yet, you wanted to see beauty becoming.
You are saying that
learning beauty is like
learning a new language.
We must live with it
moment through lifetime.
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