Lucian Freud at the MOMA, New York

Lucian Freud at the MOMA, New York - A Poem-Review

January 27th, 2008

Lucian Freud Self Portrait

Lucian, You Forgot Your Eyes

Your faces are maps:
Heat maps,
Topographical maps,
Charted & mapped terrains
Of everything but emotion,
Terrains analyzed & broken down
Into globes and bands of flesh and light.

And, as with all portraits,
This reveals more about the painter
Than it does about the subject.

And what about the painter?
There he is, he paints his own eyes
Like they’re already gone, cavities,
Hand at his neck
Like he’s readying a noose,
Face and hair merging into
Broken chaos-froth behind him,
Face flesh already made to crumble.
This is serenading death.

You wanted them slack, you said,
Slack like animals at rest.
But you go beyond that now,
Rendering everyone
Like they’re beef carcasses:
Hollow, inanimate,
Even when the visage isn’t downturned,
Even when the face not crumpled in sleep,
Even when the eyes aren’t shut
Or the gaze inert
– You can make a face a husk,
A breathtaking taxidermy.

And so your portraits are lies,
Or at best mistitled,
For they say nothing about anything
But you.

And this is their revelation.
This is their great cold power.

Only the man with the blue scarf
Escapes your scalpel-blade brush.
He looks back at us, engaging, undissected,
Spark of challenge animating his gaze,
As if to say: “I know what you’re trying to do.
I won’t be your mirror.
You’re going to get my eyes, god damn it.”