Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt
The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream.
We look at each other there with the old joy.
It was always her gift to bring me into the present—
Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses, leaves.
Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one of pressed tin,
this painting proposes.
Each carries the same water, it says.
—Jane Hirschfield
From a shockingly good free on-line magazine called Narrative. Here’s a portrait of Hirshfield, a personal fave, by Jack Smith:
Kit Stolz 