In St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum,
Rembrandt’s Danaë was knifed through twice, blinded
with sulfuric acid by a madman
so that her luminous skin, her soft swells
of belly, melted into blistered brown
like the face of a Pakistani girl
vitrioled by her dishonored family.
The restoration of her lunar curves
and folds was slow. A violence had been done,
undoable like Zeus’s brute shower.
Chiaroscuro, oil, charred and mottled.
Canvas gone blank—a clouded cataract,
a blindwhite milky eye. Tiresias
is silenced. The opaque glaze of scumble
covers Danaë, muffling like snowfall.
