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She was, in her own words, one of the people,
pulled slowly like a golden thread of a tapestry
till it stood up and danced in the light brightly,
and drew all eyes, and lifted all hearts, but for all
that, departing from the design, cut off.
And if she is still remembered, it's as one of
that band of the surreal, whose faces and forms
we see contextually mixed to graphic norms
in portraits: that through that medium survive,
one with the pagan gods, who'd caught on fast.
Or indeed, with Christ, whose images last
to this day, and whom none of those connoisseurs
who frequent the galleries, the plain species
of breathing persons, can confine to the past
or rip down the veneer of pretended dimensions.
As if the pictures effected the pretensions
to immortality - assumed real enough for all.
Yet, it must be remarked upon, this thrall
the dead, or mythological, exert over us,
which we ourselves appear to emulate
in a personal image, transferred to the state
of conceptual fixity, being clothed to suit,
picture perfect, and photographed to boot,
and in the mind an idea to contemplate
as one would the lifeless face on a canvas
that is lively.
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