His mother painted it, in another life. It is small —
less than half a metre across, not quite square.
At first glance, it’s nothing but greys, as if it could be
Some 19th century industrial cityscape or Soviet town,
But closer in, you see touches of white and blue,
Drawn faces and the pink smudge of hard-scrabble mouths;
There’s a small child in one corner and he thinks, maybe,
That it’s him. He carries it everywhere. On the bus,
At the market, in the cinema, loosely held in his old man’s hand
Or cradled carefully on his lap. The frame is old, wooden, patched.
The glass is dusty, grease-smeared, a hairline crack
Runs from the top of one grey building’s edge
To the sleeve of the mother’s grey-blue shift.
He thinks it was painted in 1943, in Lvov,
Towards the end, and as he sits in a shaft
Of winter’s sunlight half a world away,
He runs a worn finger down her grey cheek
For the hundredth time, for the thousandth time;
He tries to remember her touch, how she’d say
His name, the day she painted on a scrap of cloth
The day she hid it in his knapsack and told him to run.
He carries the painting with him every day.
His mother painted it, in another life.
Memento mori
