Observations of Paint # 2

Vita - Freske i Tomba Emmanuelle

(Emanuel Vigeland)
on left long-wall
http://www.emanuelvigeland.museum.no/mausoleet.htm

all is naked, all is life
the light is framed in bodies, only babies,
the ground grey as stone, only death

she holds the child
up
as if the world, the ground, would steal it
or suck it into its soil
and decay it
she watches it
the ground
she is standing
on the back
of an ancient woman
as stone-shaded as the skulls
in the grass
she is standing on a woman
petrified
with her head bent

she soaks in death
as a barrier in stone
a stepping-stone
from our past
that carries the circle
of life
into dawn