Shirley Glubka: Three Poems After Gerhardt Richter

Abstraktes Bild Catalogue Raisonné 889-4, by Gerhard Richter (Germany) 2004

The Cast of Light

Through glass we see:
red-tinted tenderness of light, 
the spread of red on lake and land, 
the far sky coming forth to join.

The window, though, is smeared with violence. 
This red is blood. Or has a child been here, 
small ghost in the night, 
and made for us a finger-painting, innocent?

Abstraktes Bild Catalogue Raisonné 715-1, by Gerhard Richter (Germany) 1990

There Will Be Doors Disguised, and No Key Needed

When words drip over the day like paint, 
a modest partial flow, 

and their colours are wrong  
but compelling

and the water, the blue water,
remains a steady presence,

the puzzled soul can only 
breathe and wait.

Perhaps there is a bed to make, 
a floor to clean, 

a swath of sunlight to step into
while breathing. A little later 

the outline of an opening appears,
and another, and another, and another.
​

Abstraktes Bild Catalogue Raisonné 869-8, by Gerhard Richter (Germany) 2000

In the Falling Happenstance of Depth and Light

The curtain tears itself to let the radiance, 
the braid of chance and form, 
the accidental glow, 
come forth. 

Droplets of light gleam through streaks descending,
through living lines of deep-sea blue-green, 
nut-brown, near-gold.

We urge it toward words: 
this thing that happens.
We are compelled. 

It’s like sex, physical. Like sex it insists, 
pulling and flinging and melting 
and otherwise shifting the shy soul to a whirl of cells, 
cells of self and cells of the other, 
and to the deep whirl inside cells, 
and flung too yes outward 
along the singing spiraling path 
of the crazed and the sacred unthinkable essence of all. 

We make the attempt: to lure it to pure thought, through language--
this thing that happens when in one moment we receive--
and intensify--
and again and again between birth and death--
one moment--
in beauty receiving, astonished, unable.

Unable. But if it were possible--
once even, or repeatedly--
if we were able--

How near to death might we then be— 
or near to (dare I say it?) the known/unknown, 
the overflowing: God…?

Shirley Glubka

Shirley Glubka is a retired psychotherapist as well as, at the age of 80, a mostly-retired poet, essayist, and novelist. But every once in a while: new work! Shirley’s proudest online publishing has been, for years, at The Ekphrastic Review. Her latest book is A Single Drop Was Full: erasure poetry (2022). Shirley lives in Prospect, Maine with her spouse, Virginia Holmes. Website: https://shirleyglubka.weebly.com/