Early Dutch Breakfast Paintings

Painting by Willem Kalf


EARLY DUTCH BREAKFAST PAINTINGS


want my wall. The gleam
in butter, the luster
of a herring’s muscle
laid out on a winter morning,
Judean desert of a slab
of cracked wheat bread.
I care about you
because you came after
in time for me.
The saints were all gone
by the hour I was born.
Or no, maybe they had
hidden themselves
in ordinary things.
Saint Lemonslice.
Saint Piece-of-Cheese.
Worship with our eyes
the yummy circumstance
of house and table,
makes the property of
reverence stay keen in us,
and our appetites
guru us to good
just following our eyes.
The sheen of the loaf’s
slick crust. Inside
the ornate pewter flagon
schemes the hidden wine.
Painting a picture of a thing
is always a religious act.
This is the terrible secret
hidden in Western art.
What Clara Peeters must
have meant with her
oversize hunk of bread,
her delicate little fish.


Robert Kelly

Posted over on Charlotte Mandell .

from MAY DAY: Poems 2003-2004