A portrait of Rembrandt
through Rembrandt’s eyes
in many a pose
and many a guise,
as saint and sinner,
pauper, king.
Etched in his face was everything
he knew, every man, every wife,
every woe of every life
in each expression of human kind.
He sought always light from other eyes.
Dissecting the soul within the brain,
he painted himself again and again
engraved, worn thin, reworked; paint applied
in broader brush strokes until at last
he took his place as Rembrandt, the creation.
With all the luck of a busted mirror,
beyond love, beyond humiliation,
the art was all that mattered.
Art would last.
