Lucien Freud’s “The Procurer: Man in Headscarf”
By God, it could be anything:
a vase, curved or a candlestick, slender
this person you lessen, intensely,
with such mute articulation
piece by piece by inch and avarice.
But always your title demands:
this acquisition must be female.
Your fleshy nose probes
the crooked ways.
Lucien gave you his uncle’s eyes—
tender wicked seeds that pockmark
your forehead— set aslant above
the raw, puffed cheeks; alternately
stroked: violent pinks, translucent grays.
Fixated upon you (as you, I)
perhaps canvas is the portal
by which you view me as valued
product of oils and thinners.
Cloaked as clergy, swaddled
in ochre headscarf, your lips
pursed to suit as if in prayer;
though if you are priest, your all-
encompassing head the heaven-seal
that binds the world, then
I am cast off rosary, beyond sin,
beyond sin and hope,
beyond sin and hope and prayer
Always, I am left whispering
my tongue fingering your name:
The Procurer
gatherer, provider of flesh.
For hours, for days, for those
truculent lips, I keep a despairing vigil:
waiting for the moment when
that dark-hinged gate swings open—
exit the solemn breath—
the choice, the damned:
“That one. Her.”
Indigo Moor
Halo in Decline / The Procurer / Mississippi Barbecue / Malaise / Moonlighting / Messages from the Ether / Puertas Abiertas
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