THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART

I see too,
remembering Auden’s Icarus,
that when it comes to suffering
they are seldom wrong
these reporters and their cameras,
the way they catch tragedy on the human face,
and yet sometimes they fix for us
in their instants and afterimages
…something achingly beautiful, incandescent…
so human, so human rising up.

Take this picture of Redgrave for example.
I have kept it here on my desk,
for weeks now, have studied her expression…
hand gesturing for some ideal, tender,
perhaps clear only to her.
I have met those eyes, the lips
pursed to appeal from her side.
I know little of sides and battles,
but I know that face.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

FOR WORDSWORTH: DAFFODILS

Through a long winter

my feet have traced a new path

through unpatterned shadows

from ice-laden limbs of bare trees.

Bare trees cannot shelter,

even sparrows,

yet they do offer themselves

as cold crystal prisms,

as pale sun warms the waiting

for some sound of spring. There!

Yellow chalice-faces,

green-stemmed hope,

daffodils breaking through—offering—

There!

--Barbara Smith Stoff