Hans Holbein

A Poem by Erin O’Luanaigh

He arrived in England in the very season
that Henry set his cap for Anne Boleyn,
his paintings devising the blue-green weather
in which the two lived briefly for each other,
then broke like a storm. Steely, thick-necked,
the king has soured on being love’s subject
by the time he poses for the master’s brush.
Aside from the required flatteries, a touch
of censure rests in the creases of his eyes,
in his beard, stippled with frost.
                                                       To satirize
a man is merely to depict him as he is—
lustful but waning, defiant, suspicious,
apt to pounce on a look or misplaced word.
Art, like a wrinkle, keeps its own record. 

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Portrait of Henry VIII of England, Hans Holbein, the Younger, c. 1537

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