To His Lost Lover

from A Book of Matches, 1993, Faber

Simon Armitage, British born 1963       

Poet Laureate, United Kingdom, assumed May 2019

 

 

Now they are no longer any trouble to each other

 

he can turn things over, get down to that list

of things that never happened,

 

 

 

                Love Cross, 1968 screenprint. 

Robert Indiana, American, 1928 – 2018. Philadelphia Museum of Art  

 

 

 

                                                     all of the lost

unfinishable business.

 

For instance… for instance,

 

how he never clipped and kept her hair,

 

 

 

East Market Street Antiques, Red Hook, mid-Hudson Valley, New York state. Now closed

 

 

       

                                     or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush

 

 

at the fall of her name in close company.

 

How they never slept like buried cutlery –

two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,

 

 

 

The tines of a fork wrapping a piece of Navaho turquoise.  Artisanal work.  Philadelphia, 2000

 

 

 

or made the most of some heavy weather –

 

 

 

 

The Thunder Shower, c. 1917, tempera on wood. 

H. Lymen Sayen,  1875-1918, American. Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC

A student of Henri Matisse.

 

 

 

walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,

 

 

 

 

Rain: lithograph and screenprint, 1976. 

David Hockney, born 1937, British.  National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 

 

 

or did the gears while the other was driving.

 

 

                         

    Gear, c. 1922, oil on canvas. 

Arthur Garfield Dove, 1880-1946, American.  Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

 

How he never raised his fingertips

to stop the segments of her lips

 

from breaking the news,

 

 

 

 

Everything Has Failed!  Don’t You Think It is Time for Love? 2007.  Spray paint on paper part of a 5-channel video installation   

Sharon Hayes, born 1970, American.  MOMA, NY

 

 

 

or tasted the fruit

or picked for himself the pear of her heart,

 

or lifted her hand to where his own heart

was a small, dark, terrified bird

in her grip. Where it hurt.

 

 

 

 

In the Hand, oil on tempered Masonite, 1957.   

John Wilde, 1919-2006, American.  Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

 

 

 

Or said the right thing,

 

or put it in writing.

 

 

 

Love sculpture, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1970, Cor-Ten steel. 

Robert Indiana, 1928-2018, American.

 

 

 

And never fled the black mile back to his house

before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,

 

then another,

or knew her

favourite colour,

 

her taste, her flavour,

 

and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,

or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather,

 

 

 

Untitled (Woman’s Profile), 1936, Decalcomania (ink transfer) on paper. 

Marcel Jean, 1900-1993, French.  MOMA, NY

 

 

                     or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

when he might have, or worked a comb

where no comb had been,

 

 

 

Combs from the south and the north of Ethiopia

 

 

                                           or walked back home

 

through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

 

to his butterfly heart

 

 

 

Abstraction Blue, 1927, oil on canvas. 

Georgia O’Keefe, 1887-1986, American. MOMA, NY

This painting marks the artist’s move to abstraction, a decision she made in 1915.

 

 

in its two blue halves.

 

 

 

As above

 

 

 

And never almost cried,

and never once described

 

an attack of the heart,

or under a silk shirt

 

nursed in his hand her breast,

 

 

Briarpatch Blues, 2014, seriagraph, relief print with chine colle.

Alison Saar, American born 1956.  Photo from the website of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia

 

 

her left, like a tear of flesh

 

wept by the heart,

where it hurts,

 

or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,

 

 

 

Detail of Briarpatch Blues, woodcut printing plate, no date given. 

Alison Saar, American born 1956.  Loaned to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2017 by Lafayette College, Pennsylvania

 

 

 

or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

 

Or christened the Pole Star in her name,

 

or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

 

 

 

 

Untitled and undated.  Marisa Merz, 1926-2019, Italian. 

Loan by the Glenstone Museum, Potomac, MD to the Philadelphia Art Museum in memoriam, 2019

 

 

 

a pilot light,

 

or stayed the night,

 

 

 

 

The Critic Smiles, embossed lead relief, with gold and tin foil additions. ?Date

 Jasper Johns, American born 1930.  On view at the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2021/22

 

 

or steered her back to that house of his,

 

 

 

 

A log house on Lawrence Street, Philadelphia

 

A man came to Philadelphia from West Virginia fifty or so years ago. 

He built this house on a small street in an area of the city named Northern Liberties by William Penn.  He could not have done this with the usual zoning permissions.  He has been allowed to keep the house.  New housing has edged him all around now.

 

 

 

or said “Don’t ask me how it is

 

I like you.

I just might do.”

 

How he never figured out a fireproof plan,

 

or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

 

were a solid ball

of silver foil

 

 

 

 

The Proverbial Worm; mixed fibers and laser-cut acrylics. 

Ed Bing Lee now in his 80’s, lives in the eastern United States.  Snyderman Gallery (now closed), Philadelphia.

 

 

 

and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,

 

 

 

 

and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

 

 

Life, 1994, offset print.  Mitsuo Katsui, Japanese born 1931. 

Private collection loan to the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2017

 

 

 

But said some things and never meant them –sweet

nothings anybody could have mentioned.

 

And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,

 

about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.

 

 

 

 

Somebody Stole My Broken Heart, 2005, five-colour lithograph on Arches Cover white paper. 

Faith Ringgold, American born 1930.  Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia