La Maternité

          after La Maternité, 1901, Pablo Picasso 
          National Gallery, London

 
He painted the mother
cradling her son, arms
wrapped around him like swaddling cloth
his long limbs bent as if still
in the womb. Afternoon quiet 
suspended in the folds of her blue shawl, 
her eyes full of the weight of sadness perhaps
weariness. A cathedral of light falls on his sleeping face
while behind them undulating fields 
unfold to blue water.
 
This past October, two protesters
pasted a poster of a war-gored
wailing mother and her bloodied child, slapped it
over the glass protecting the painting
red pigment spattering the floor beneath,
the photograph shiver-close, seething 
madness pulled down to black and white.
The mother’s eyes full of anguish
she cradles her terrified child
his weight against her breast
the incomprehensible world pressing.
 
How can these images not merge,
my eyes blink 
and take in the landscapes
of history where a mother can  
only make a country of her arms,
cradle the light at the center
of her children before she must 
release them.