Munch: Les Solitaires (Deux Personnes) by Clint Margrave

Les Solitaires, by Edvard Munch (Norway), 1907.

Munch: Les Solitaires (Deux Personnes)
                      (from the exhibit: Munch and Modernism, Paris, 2010)
 
I think I know these two.
I’ve met them before,
attended their wedding.
 
The man stands behind the woman
as he must, just as a woman
must stand behind her man.
 
A simple premise so hard to do.
 
If this is a sky, let it be a night sky,
yet there are no stars, no planes have
been invented to pass over them.
 
No cell phones to stare at.
They will have to talk.
What can they say?
 
 “The river is made out of wood”?
“Stop being so two dimensional”?
“Yes we can!”
 
Their hope is already far behind them.
All that remains is their solitude.
And the callous whispers of modernity.

Clint Margrave

Clint Margrave is the author of Salute the Wreckage (2016) and The Early Death of Men (2012), both published by NYQ Books. His work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, as well as in New York Quarterly, Rattle, Cimarron Review, Verse Daily, Word Riot, and Ambit (UK), among others. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.