Your portrait pictures wear and tear.
What stories would your bristles bare?

Did they draw forth those flowing strands
of Venus or The Starry Night ?
 
Were they applied to Adam's hands
or in The Great Wave frothing white?
 
Perhaps they helped proclaim The Scream
or summoned up some Dali dream
 
or lent The Kiss more tenderness
or darkened Madame X 's dress.
 
Abstractions: maybe that was you.
Kandinsky? Rothko? Red and blue?
 
Where were you? Athens? Paris? Spain?
Can you recall a pipe or train?

A name like Plato? Delacroix?
The Old Guitarist ? Guernica ?
 
Or did you give The Girl those eyes
or helped the Fauvists to arise?
 
It's possible you had no part
in any of that famous art,
 
and yet, at once, you symbolize
all painters, paintings, and our eyes.