At the Prado, Age Eighteen
[Las Meninas, Velázquez, 1656]
When I finally got there let’s say it didn’t matter
that on the way over as I was crossing the street
a woman offered me flowers, and I didn’t buy,
and she hit me with them, shouting, and the light
changed and I fled; didn’t matter whether Madrid
felt cold and severe and rainy
or cold and magnificent and rainy;
made no difference, even, that on New Year’s Eve
I lost track of my friends
and wandered rain-slicked streets alone
because I was uninterested in a stranger’s
hands on me—call me a prude, whatever,
that’s how I felt that night—let’s say
when I finally got there, the only thing that mattered
was Velázquez peering out from behind the easel
in the background, showing me light and breath
and cruelty, the Infanta a skinny little kid strapped
into her dress like the tent-pole in a circus tent, and
beside her, bristling, alive, two girls, unusually small,
often called dwarves. One looked out with the fierce
elegant face of a person who sees
everything, surrounded by people
who don’t notice much, who move
destroyingly through their little world.
There is still the interior life, Maria Bárbola said to me
in the echoing gallery, and there was white
light all over her immaculate dress.
