A Portrait by Rembrandt in the Toledo Museum

Deanne Bayer

Caved cheeks grooved
like weathered stone, bristles
too sparse
for a beard, as if the skeleton
of your face
could not support
its weight, your shoulders slump
beneath a fur-collared coat
whose richness can never be woven
from enough warmth
to stream your blood
back towards youth, or spark
the sockets
of your desolate eyes.

The coat belongs
to the artist, who keeps
such sumptuous costumes
at his studio in the Hebrew Quarter
to adorn the derelicts
plucked from the streets
he pays pennies to pose
and delights in painting
so much more
than the burghers
who pay him  the desolation
belongs to you.

But, here, on this canvas
for all of time, you
are a nobleman
in a fur-collared coat, the stubble
on your chin
an idiosyncrasy of an aristocrat
cavalier about his appearance,
too parsimonious to hire
a barber, who husbands his wealth
as well as his wife.

After the portrait is finished,
you’ll return to the streets
missing the warmth of fur, feast
until the pennies
are spent, and never apprehend
your own immortality.