Letter From Gauguin's Daughter


Papa,

Enclosed is what little money
your last exhibition made here in Copenhagen.
Please do not be discouraged; the light in this city
is so muted, not even snow can be white.
Your flat impasto of magenta, of orange-
of course the reviewers would see it as caricature.

You ask about our health. Mother is not improved.
In her fever she forgets our reversal of fortune,
the exile from Paris. She dreams of our house
on the rue de Lorette, asks if you're home from the bank,
or at your Sunday hobby, painting that cute red fox?
Bedridden, she rings me to describe Paris
from her window above these rotting Danish docks.

I am well, besides missing you and France.
Every day my Danish aunts introduce me
to the blond eyelashes of some local Lars or Søren
who seeks a hard-working wife. I suppose
I should be grateful, being 27 and too thin.
Yes, I am still sketching between stints
with the seamstress, and I'm glad you think
I capture well the harpsichord in the parlor.
Papa, it's five years since you left us here,
telling me care for mother, telling me six months.
But you paint someone called Vahinè, who sits
with earth-tipped breasts, weaving a basket
from screw pine. On her blanket is the pipe
you'd pack with cherry tobacco in the evenings.
Now your foxes are fanged and not so picturesque.

Just yesterday I looked in the pier glass, Papa,
and laughed to realize I'm still waiting
to get prettier, happier, waiting for my neck
to grow graceful before I wear my pearls.
But we stop growing, Papa, or most of us do.
I remember once, as a girl, walking into your studio-
I heard Mother's brassy bell, its note of need.
You stood painting, unhearing. On your easel,
a room with a window through which could be seen
the glad back of somebody walking away.

Papa, I must finish this letter. Yes,
you'll have money when the seamstress pays me.
What do you think of my sketches? Excuse me, the bell rings-

Aline






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