***
Outlined in pencil,
your hands are dancing
beyond the margins of my paper.
Lost somewhat in reproduction,
I am puzzled,
not only because of the reduction in size
but also because of crumples –
the details that do not undermine the grandiosity
of those Leonardo hands
of yours.
Succeeding
at what they are supposed to do –
commandingly
beautiful –
they should be read, not viewed.
They wave the epithets and emblems,
they speak through me a weird language,
that I don’t speak,
that I am struggling to get the gist of,
Unhurriedly, I am sensing your skin,
touching your fingers,
making the holes along the canvas
of my imaginary piece of paper.
Unquestioned assumption
is circulating
around my pencil –
that the ultimate destiny of your hands
is to be hung in a gallery.
My desire to pin down their meanings,
to put them in the museum,
is greater than the rest of
me –
books, words, film screenings,
poems.
Again, Proust
was correct:
“If it was something
that ought to be seen,
I saw it!”.
