He kept away from those fin-de-siecle
cafes, their world-weary gossip; preferred
private dinners with dear friends. At his peak,
age forty-five, he finished Bloch-Bauer’s
portrait, heaping her in silver and gold
which still couldn’t match jewels of her eyes,
while Egyptian eyes on her gown seemed cold
set beside that face his brush idolized.
Raising the bar far beyond realism,
he also lifted Vienna’s vision,
seeming to find his own innate prism
to project color: master’s precision.
Never self-portraits, or so he’d insist.
But how he revealed his soul in The Kiss.
Roger Armbrust
September 6, 2001
from "The Aesthetic Astronaut: Sonnets"
published by Parkhurst Brothers Publishers
