everything's a little bit sad
because it has to end, has ended, is ending, will end
the sketches are precise but everyone has the same light blue eyes
the same dented nose and receding chin, the same skeleton underneath,
I wonder what holbein looked like
if he, like da vinci, couldn't help but find himself in every face,
all the rich white people of the 16th century
staring stoically, while he made them jewelry for their necks,
plates for their neverending tables, frescoes for the walls
and how do we know if the sketches are true at all?
were they made to satisfy vanity or demean it?
you know, in his portrait,
years after he fell at the battle of bosworth, an axe cleaving his head,
a spike driven into the back of it,
richard III was turned into a demon,
the face of a young, handsome man
transformed by enemies into just the kind of guy
who would lock his nephews in a tower,
a talon was even added to his thumb!
and he never did half of what was claimed,
he came up with the bright idea of innocent until proven guilty,
that's pretty funny when you think about it,
so who can say any of them looked like what we've been offered,
just like none of us can know if the same blue you see, I see,
that's the trouble with everything, really,
and when I decide to google him, there he is, hans holbein the younger,
looking more like henry VIII than henry ever did,
the younger so his old dad wouldn't get mad, a painter in his own right,
giving everyone the same receding chin and blue eyes as his son,
who knows? maybe that's just how it goes, a jumble of genes
leaving everybody vaguely similar, the way rich white people are even now,
that air of derision that marks every brow,
he painted anne of cleves at burgau castle,
her pale, pretty face with eyes downcast,
thomas cromwell declared it a perfect representation,
while henry VIII did not, the lady in person meek and mild,
draped in heavy, unflattering german dress,
and she was divorced after an unconsummated marriage,
a blessing, the rest of henry's wives might have said, if they'd been alive,
cromwell might've chimed in too,
but he lost the king's favor, along with his head, soon after,
where it remained on a london bridge spike for months,
reminding everyone that the blue you see, may not be what the king sees,
I enhance holbein's self-portrait
until it's nothing but the pale azure of an iris,
a dark black pupil with a dot of white,
this close, it looks almost like something anyone could do,
I trace the hooded, lashless eyes, the faint lines under them,
it's been nearly 500 years since he died, and it makes me a little sad
everything ends, has ended, is ending, will end,
every painting a painting of the dead,
for holbein, at 45, in a grave never marked,
I wonder if he saw death the way he carved it,
the dance of death, death with a capital 'd'
waltzing with popes, physicians, ploughmen,
everyone in between, a great leveller pulling them all underground,
he drew the woodcuts in his twenties, life already half through,
each no bigger than four postage stamps in a rectangle,
cut by his friend, another hans, hans lützelburger,
he was done with 41, 10 more to go!
when death found his hand, kissed it, and pulled him down,
hans, the younger that is, waited years before they were fully published,
becoming a genius finally seen, and then, a knock on the door,
a skeletal hand waving hello, that's enough from you, no more,
I wonder if his hooded eyes smiled when he died,
(the same blue you see, do I see too?)
I wonder if he looked up, sighed, oh, hey, it’s you
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina with a BA in Studio Arts. She lives in Graham, North Carolina, with her cats James Cagney and Janis Joplin.