An Hour Chez Delacroix, and: From the Winter of …
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An Hour Chez Delacroix
Young, her skies had notbled or bleached or broken yet,but dead men sang a cappellawrestling angels behind walls infierce duets likeJacob and this seraph hand tohand for destiny where the artist'shand held his palette of violence—
Now in his garden a summerjade—stilled whereAugust's petals whisper downage and she dares to welcome itin the artist's house—learn that silence ofstruggle for her own whereJacob and his angel fell. [End Page 105]
From the Winter of …
One of these is true.
All the animals were making love. It was the day for it. All the otheranimals but a wolf who hid, listening to the slide trombone of his ownbreath. Who lay in a dim room, quiet but for the simmer
of breaths of the lovers outside. It was their day. There was no lock on theroom. Only a belief that he was meant to lie in the silence. Breathe in thedim. Not meant to question. No howling. No
questions. He slept, warmed by the high fever of his belief.
Once upon a time there were bodies strewn and none to gather them. Itwas a massacre. That's why we remember the day. Death had shot andshot and gotten away with it. That's what survivors
said. Warmed by the high fever of their belief.
It was one single arrow of passion, and Eros was good with it. A winner.Whom it struck—loved and was loved in return. Until it hurt the heart.No questions were allowed. The poison of love was a
perfect killer. Everyone wanted to taste the poison. Warmed by the highfever of their belief.
Once upon a time there was a peaceful body born who loved everyoneand everything on earth and in the air. No one had taught her. She wouldlie down in silence on a road or a field to stop bullets or
souls. She believed in the power of her thought. If warriors came withflags and swords and bombs and God on their side—stop! said her nakedwoman body, paused in the path of their attacks. She's on [End Page 106]
fire, observers saw. And loving her, stop! said the covens of owls, stop,said a murder of crows, stop, said eyes from branches to the east,branches to the west. Stop, said the hawk who loved wars. Stop
murmured the dove who knew the hawk very well. And her naked bodywhispered, God does not love warriors. A whisper that pierced theirhearts that wanted to be loved by their own God. There,
whispered the woman, looking to a sky she believed she saw … do youknow what to do now, God? Warmed by the high fever of her belief.
One of these is true. Or almost. A gift from the winter. [End Page 107]
Margo Berdeshevsky, born in New York City, often writes and lives in Paris. Her newest collection, Before the Drought (Glass Lyre Press), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She is also author of Between Soul & Stone and But a Passage in Wilderness (Sheep meadow Press). Her book of illustrated stories, Beautiful Soon Enough, received the first Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Award for Fiction Collective Two (University of Alabama Press). Other honors include the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, a portfolio of her work in the Aeolian Harp Anthology #1 (Glass Lyre), inclusion in the & Now Anthology of the Best Innovative Writing, and numerous Pushcart Prize nominations. She's been published widely in American and international literary magazines. Visit www.margoberdeshevsky.com
Footnotes
Note:
. There is a small museum in Paris where Delacroix lived and worked on his painting of Jacob wrestling with the angel.
