A Cento on Frida Kahlo's "Diego on my Mind"
The window square whitens and swallows its dark stars,
the weeping woman goes weeping along the riverbanks
Shall she not find comfort in the sun?
At night, she holds his pillow to her ribs and rubs.
(Memory, that preposterous and unreliable refuge
of things once loved and taken for granted.)
He could be a girl with his long brown arms.
But how to speak to a man who does not see you,
who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depth of hell itself?
He does not look up into the ever-changing expanse of morning,
lighting the secret ways we selve our works and days.
Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day,
you say the opposite of what you mean.
I see the body of the woman who pulled him into it.
Love, chimed the saints and angels.
Hate, shrieked the gunmetal princess.
Marriage could be the caption.
What is there to know?
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall.
– diane kendig