Catharina Poem by mark littler

Vermeer kept hs best work in his studio and after his death his widow refused to sell any of it keeping the completed canvases at home

Simply to watch the paint dry

Enormous staring eyes
White as jade
Netherworld silk

She is the most beautiful thing in the room

Plainly exhausted same as her daughter
Hour as the glass

She is the fool of the artist
Chain light and object
The colour of flesh lead softness
Look at the unpainting
Everything changes
Light. Rot. Table. Nail, bread
Kitchen maid standing on the mask
Landscape home
Landscape mythology
between
Where and what
Draw the red curtain on echoes

Look she is beautiful
buried burning smoke I believe form
Dog and snake cross cutting
jaws closed
as life and the other, death