Anthony van Dyck, Marie de Raet

Clothes were the first imprisonment.
To the luxurious black dress

that reads hyacinth in the highlights,
add ropes of pearls trammeling

her bodice, even her wrists;
terrapin-blue ribbons coiling

round her upper arms; spidery lace
to throttle that pale Antwerp neck;

and the feathered black fan shaped
like a club—plumes, pearls, silk,

all straight off the dock. Surprised
into being, she purses her mouth

as if unable to protest, brows lifted
in some distant cousin of pain—

or, as she stands before the painter
hour after hour, untutored

wholesomeness at being bound.
The imperious clothes, like duty,

must weigh a ton. By dead
reckoning, she must be at least

seven feet tall. A dead-eyed spaniel crouches at
her feet, its attention elsewhere.