The little girl in a red dress and red hat
seated with an orange in her hands
has a deeply sorrowful expression.
She is not the Mona Lisa but her expression
has a similar elusive quality; the question
might be, why would someone so young
and lovely know such woefulness.

Much of this artist’s works present women
with expressions of distress and forlornness
never much joy or happiness, never satisfaction
which makes one wonder about the artist’s life.
Her bio reads: she was Jewish, ill all of her life
educated in a convent.

It raises the question, are we confined
within the walls of our childhood
to repeat what we experience and perceived in youth.
Is this, “the light of the mind, cold and planetary”
where “the trees of the mind are black?”

Yet we see the artist struggle with reds
and orange trying to transcend anguish
to find some small element of delight
in an otherwise desolate life.