Here’s a stamped monoprint with inverted colours that is not by Chagall! Plus a poem I wrote in response to one of his paintings.
On Nearly Fainting at the Gallery
At the gallery
I stand in front of a lesser known painting by Chagall.
A wild dark little piece that I’ve never seen,
dreamlike as are his works:
a head and leg separated from bodies, leaping violinist and dancer, a goat, rabbi,
tables on the snow, small dark, snow roofed ghetto houses,
the moon a crescent
and a red bloused woman with bouquet, the artist being carried towards her.
The border to my childhood has opened
and I am carried, nearly fainting, to the place of waking dreams.
Out of the dark comes the religion of my birth that I do not follow
come my ancestors now, as then,
speaking of family and celebration
while losing their minds and life to endless motion
meant to assuage pain.
I find there is someone I long for,
not the bouqueted woman
nor the great painter himself.
Someone lesser, more obscure
someone who has lived both in ordinary rooms
and through a transparent shroud,
who goes wild:
leaping, losing limbs, dancing, flying
but is as surefooted as the goat,
picking its way,
sustained in itself, yet among the fray
not blown off course
and steadfastly heading
towards whatever home really is.
© Lily S. May
Arts of May 