Where is the fear in your face?
Is it ensconced in the crease
beneath your right eye, or in that trace
of blue in the Matisse
you bought on your holiday in France,
that lonely blue period in your life
when you felt exploited by circumstance
and when you lost your wife.
I wonder if fear, or love, or joy
become fixated in our flesh
or do we destroy
these feelings and start fresh
every time we weep
or thrash about in anger.
Can we sweep
away danger
like lint on our coats
leaving behind no debris,
or does it take umbrage in our throats,
an unarticulated plea?
I’d say if you look hard in every case,
you can see the fear and strain
there in every face,
secreted behind the pain.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Our faces show often the pain, the memories, the anger, the illness. The flesh is like a canvas, yes, like a Matisse!