Patchwork

(The Artist Fernand Léger among His Works
by Robert Doisneau, 1912-1994, French photographer

“From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.”

~ Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), American author, in an interview in 1958

PATCHWORK

I have been thinking at random
on the universe
or rather, how nothing in the universe
is random —

(there’s nothing like presumption late at night.)

My sumptuous
trash bag of colors —
Laura Ashley cottons —
waits to be cut
and stitched and patched

but there’s a mechanical feel
about the handle
of my secondhand sewing machine,
with its flowers
and Singer painted orange on it.
And its iron wheel.

My back is to the dark.
Somewhere out there
are stars and bits of stars
and little bits of bits.
And swiftness and brightness and drift.

But is it craft or art?

I will be here
till midnight,
cross-legged in the dining-room,
logging triangles and diamonds,
cutting and aligning,
finding greens in pinks
and burgundies in whites
until I finish it.

There’s no reason in it.

Only when it’s laid
right across the floor,
sphere on square
and seam on seam,
in a good light —
a night-sky spread —
will it start to hit me.

These are not bits.
They are pieces.

And the pieces fit.

~ Eavan Boland, born 1944, Irish poet