Esteemed Sirs, all Honorable Ladies - the artist asked me to pose and he chose all the clothes and the hat and he made me stand there behind a frame And he was serious but he asked me to smile and then asked me to have a smaller smile not too broad, just a smile between not smiling and smiling and he said these things with such seriousness And he said not to stand like an animal in a cage but to come forward in the frame and to put my hands ever so casually on the frame
And he said, keep glowing and he said this with all seriousness and when he did smile it was like between not smiling and smiling as if he were posing for me And he was drawing and drawing and then he had a break and I had something to eat and drink in the kitchen and then I was back behind the frame and he took several days
And I thought what a serious man this was, this artist And when he had finished, he asked me to look and I thought it was a lovely picture of me And then I realized how playful this artist was, how clever - putting me in a frame, as if we lived our lives in a frame And then he had the canvas put in frame so there’s frame within frame – and I laughed then to see how much humor the artist had, though he had worked with such earnestness, such grave countenance – I’ve been framed! Ha, ha…now I wonder often, if we do not actually live our lives within a frame, each one of us confined in frames…
- poem based on “The Girl in a Picture Frame” (1641, oil on canvas) by Rembrandt