Yumpu_Catalogue_Peacemaking

Woman Holding a Balance
If the painting-within-the-painting, hanging on the wall
behind the standing woman—
with its sinners wailing at Christ’s feet on Judgment Day—
if that might be one way
of looking at it, then the woman herself, who half
obscures the painting, is
another. All we know of her is what we see:
how—weightless, effortless
as flame—she stands to face the lightfall over the umber,
oilcloth-covered table.
How each of the nails on her right hand, at the center of
the composition, burns
like phosphor. How—what word would one use?—beneficent?
her aspect is: the source
of light from beneath her skin, such sweetly sculptural eyelids
& cheekbones, blessing of
her waistline’s fullness. Objects here are neither more
nor less than what they seem
to be: the table, for instance, offering itself—
the ornate carvings of
its vase-shaped legs—to the benediction of her touch,
her left-hand fingertips
alight on its very edge. Or the strand of pearls, with its yellow
satin ribbon, furled
all but unnoticed on the oilcloth there—where three
gold coins, & a silver one,