No white dress
can save you
from the
Anschluss.
Even your folded hands,
a penitent’s
gesture,
are not enough.
The gossamer silk
draped around you
is one of several
illusions in a
lavish parlor that
suspends your girlhood
in a cage of light,
your father’s
house
a locked gallery
that holds teacups
as thin as rose
petals near a
mirror multiplying all
silver, the teapots
from the Old
Empire that your
great-grandmother had
arranged on her
hall table, remnants
of her trousseau
that suit you
like the blue
ribbons beaded around
your neck and
bodice, streamers to
signify containment
and, perhaps,
complacency so fitting
for such a tranquil
place, one rare world
where the noose
of life is
ambiguity, such as
the price you pay
for perfection and
the tenuous way
you greet life
here in this
chaste rendering
of who you
had to be,
your circumspect youth
disembodied in a
blur of white.
Facing the easel,
it was natural
that your shoulders
folded toward your
breasts to avert
the artist’s
gaze,
just as they
will turn the
moment you witness
history’s
obscenity
one afternoon when
stormtroops shoot
the locks on the
French doors of
your house and
kick down the
screen of your
dressing room to
pull you, napping
from the burgundy
velvet cushions
you brought from
your mother’s
country
loggia, in that instant
which you recognize
completely as the
end of dreaming.
