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II Rodin’s fingers: probe, pinch, ease open, polish, calm. Keep still, he says, recueille-toi: sit on the rock, gaze out to sea, and I shall make you patience on a monument. Keep still. I kept still; he looked away. On the stairs. In the yard. I stood, not noticed, in the middle of half-broken stone, aborted figures. I was a failed work, keeping still among the darting birds. His hand refused to close, my lips stayed open all hours.He might drop in. Brushing against Rilke in the corridor: he smiles with fear or pity. Angels, polished and black, bump into us at strange angles.Afternoon light swells like a thundercloud in the attic, busy around an empty chair, draped like the dead king’s throne. III Thérèse dreamed that her father stood with his head wrapped in black, lost. Thérèse looks at the photographer under his cloth and sees Papa not seeing her. 12
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I watch Thérèse watching Papa and wondering whenthe cloth comes off. I watch her thinking you can spend a short life not being seen. Thérèse looks at me and says, Only when you can’t see him do you know you’re there. She says, Can you see me not seeing you? That’s when you see me. 1 Gwen John made numerous sketches from photographs of St Thérèse of Lisieux as a child. IV I sent the boys off with their father. I shall wait on the drenched hill. Meudon, my Ararat, where the colours pour into the lines of a leaf ’s twist. And the backs of the chairs and schoolgirls’ plaits at Mass are the drawn discord, expecting the absolution of light in the last bar. 13

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II Rodin’s fingers: probe, pinch, ease open, polish, calm. Keep still, he says, recueille-toi: sit on the rock, gaze out to sea, and I shall make you patience on a monument. Keep still. I kept still; he looked away. On the stairs. In the yard. I stood, not noticed, in the middle of half-broken stone, aborted figures. I was a failed work, keeping still among the darting birds. His hand refused to close, my lips stayed open all hours.He might drop in. Brushing against Rilke in the corridor: he smiles with fear or pity. Angels, polished and black, bump into us at strange angles.Afternoon light swells like a thundercloud in the attic, busy around an empty chair, draped like the dead king’s throne.

III Thérèse dreamed that her father stood with his head wrapped in black, lost. Thérèse looks at the photographer under his cloth and sees Papa not seeing her.

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