Anna Crowe
The shadow
The shadow
after The Balcony Room by Adolf Menzel, 1845
in memory of my sister, Rosy (2.11.1946-21.2.2004)
Since your death,
I’ve taken to visiting this room.
I like its emptiness, its modest triumphs,
the way sun pours through gauzy curtains
to lay a block of light on the bare floor.
Matter-of-fact. Unheroic. A stillness
big enough to hold a room we shared
as girls, on holiday at Talloires,
releasing a scent of beeswax,
a shimmer of lakewater,
and mountains looming like the future.
The muslin curtains billow
in sprigged folds like a nightdress,
and I picture you, who always dressed with care,
pausing to smooth your skirt
in front of the tall pier-glass.
Like death, it renders everything clear
within its narrow compass—
the striped sofa, the engraving whose gilt frame
catches the light like a strand of hair.
And these two chairs that turn their backs on each other
have ceased a lifetime’s conversation.
The sun highlights their uselessness
while touching a curved back
to warmth and colour.
Better to focus on that rough patch
the sun picks out on the opposite wall.
Is it a shadow, banal as death itself,
cast by the world outside on the balcony,
or did the decorator simply abandon his task?
I stare at it and take courage from that baldness,
from blemished plaster with a crack at its centre
like the confluence of two rivers; from this faithful
portrayal of things as they really are.
