Ars Poética en el Museo del Prado
BY ISABELLA DESENDI
At the museum in Madrid, Pablo teaches us
about Titian’s technique. Makes us move
around the octagonal room to witness
the ways in which a smear of white glaze
cast perfectly in the lagoon of Danae’s naked armpit
highlights the shadows of her body
in greater detail from a distance. We move further away,
closer, then further again, noting how
she becomes incoherent, muted, then finally understood
depending on where you stand, the angle
at which you look. The room responds
to the brilliance, and it is brilliant, but I’m frustrated
that artists spend so much time articulating
details only to ask the world to step back
and see us through illusions we’ve created.
Why can’t I just say I’ve lost someone I love–
someone who couldn’t look past my flaws and now
I’m writing this stupid poem to ignore that simple fact.
I know Titian suffered reddening the velvet curtain,
carving out the edge between Danae’s hip and thigh.
Light is the same as language. The technique of blurring
paint no different than metaphor or the sleight of hand
I just used when I said it was the artifice that bothered me
and not the fact that I am no different from the painter
having asked everyone for distance, thinking
my errors could be accepted if placed purposefully
in poems, curated objects witnessed from afar.
Even now, reader, this poem is only a fragment
of some wound I have had to admit, erase,
then dress up to show you. But I do like the painting—
Danae reposed, summoning. Her breasts pale
as a dove’s underwing exposed in lambent light.
Pablo explains that in Danae’s myth Zeus sensed her desire
and came to her through a gold shower falling
from the sky. The truth is, what actually frustrates me
is Danae. Her autonomous pleasure. Her imperfect
body, beautiful. My wound is wanting to know
how it feels to be a woman that desired, desiring–
that even a god knowing all your flaws
would still shatter his world to reach you.
