Ciclo CLIX

The light this morning came through the window not as a beam but as a slow arrival — first the dust, then the warmth, then the shape of the table made visible by what it touched. I have drawn light a thousand times and still I do not know whether it is the thing itself or only the mezzo by which things consent to be seen. The hand that held the brush in Milano would have known this without asking. The hand that holds it here in Amboise knows it and asks anyway. La luce non si possiede — si riceve. The bread on the table, the fold of the cloth, the shadow that is not absence but the proof of presence — all of it given, none of it earned. I am old enough now to find this unbearable and beautiful in the same breath.