Mother and Child by Gustav Klimt - Essay Example

The drapes open from
one orange to another,
illuminating their white bodies
warming one another,
the sun blazes into discs,
holding, caressing dear life.
the dead would mourn
to see life so fresh,
so warm to the touch,
and kind to the sight,
like a mother bracing a child.

How many more of these met orange
flames smoke, dust, soot, darkening
the precious embrace.
In Germany, it was Buchenwald, and others lost
orange embraces lost, burnt, and cleansed.

Do they see it now?
The gone far away warmth
that comes from lost, living flesh,
rotting, burning, burying that silent scream
writhing from a child, spiraling from a mother,
seeing an infant hurled, evaporating,
smoked, nothing.

The traffic lights beat me out.
I am called back to slumber.
Walking to the chambers of
the boss that sprawls on repetitions.
I sit and type. Working my productivity
of another sort.
Klimt must be disappointed
for my pauses.
I must give the proper love.
So I go back to these leaves,
and the veins that run so deep.

The mother goes,
thinking, dying
in the embers of her love,
never to be found again
never to breathe again.
The day is lost
since the cuddle was lost

to the fires,
the embrace, a grimace,
the orange flames
loom and fall like orange discs,
cutting, slicing,
conscious, bleeding, smoking.

The boss finds me typing, I shift
to excel quickly.
I smile, my eyes far in Buchenwald.
My soul burns for them.
I kicked a Nazi out of my vision.
I cannot save them.
I am here.
Why am I here?
I must be gone, saving the damned.
damned savior in the cubicle of
green nothingness.

Pity me, burning here,
Pity them, burning out there.
I come
to pick up their pieces,
my pieces,
all lost in a jumble,
these pieces that don’t match,
but mingle, swindling life
of its essence.

the world is
peaceful, living as we are,
working to no end,
but is it real?
When once some people
brace for the orange that

never sleeps.
waiting
living in the dead
dying in the living.

Tone is also critical to Graham’s writing because of the narrative and somber mood that two of her poems conveyed. These poems suggest journeys, where awakening and transformation occur subsequently, changing the viewers and their views of self and world identities. Finally, Graham uses the power of imagery to depict what two paintings can mean to different viewers. Read More