Love, a Painting by Sally Bliumis-Dunn

Usary of Love, by Francesco Clemente, 1986.

Love, a Painting

The painting is divided,
two halves exactly alike;

in each, the lovers are lying down
suspended in a misty white.

This is how it was with us
in our room of candles and darkness

where walls flew off like ravens,
like the lovers in this painting

held in weightless space
where anything, even

the brush of a leg or face
could collapse the air beneath them

and make them fall.
The painting is divided,

two halves exactly alike;
as if this painting captured

a certain point in time
when the same painting painted itself

in each lover’s mind;
this is how it was.

Sally Bliumis-Dunn

Sally Bliumis-Dunn is the author of Talking Underwater and Second Skin (Wind Publications, 2007, and 2010). She teaches at Manhattanville College and lives in Armonk, New York.