If I could film her reading on the train,
the text would be Chagall's biography:
her face a study in expressive reverie,
flickering with shadows from the Central
European pale, the Hebraic industry of small
tradesmen, their synagogues - a reflexive
cosmos, fearing predators, surviving threats,
despite the looming silhouettes of wolves
and bears; then dashed apart - the Warsaw
ghetto's heroism, stoicism torched and charred,
its immolation rendered unto history...
Her deep eyes glance up from the page
without perceiving me, the hidden camera trained
on her by my unbroken gaze: their depths elude
this shallow century where we shall never meet.
Millennia cohered to shape the consciousness
they now reflect unconsciously as star-
refracting wells in old Vitebsk, glimpsed
by lovers clasped in air's embrace
above dim, narrow streets, smiling as they
skim beneath the moon, in gravity's release.
And so Chagall rests in her lap,
an icon smuggled between stations,
till we alight at different stops
to go our separate ways...