Julie Triganne is a poet from Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). Her work has appeared in carte blanche, Headlight Anthology, yolk, and Arc Poetry Magazine. She has an MA in creative writing from Concordia University.
“‘Blepharitis’ draws inspiration from The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the centre panel of the Ghent Altarpiece (Hubert van Eyck and Jan van Eyck, 1432). I had the privilege of seeing the painting, in all its glory, at Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent. Later, I read how conservators discovered the lamb’s original face was overpainted in the 16th century to look more lamb-like, its original incarnation perceived as weirdly, unsettlingly human. This made me consider the power dynamics of the gaze: the sacrificial lamb returns the viewer’s stare in a way that unnerves them, offsetting the control inherent in the act of looking and troubling the conventional notion of redemption represented in the painting. My poem explores these ideas in a quotidian setting, a dreary March during which I struggled with writer’s block and roamed the neighbourhood with my dog.
“The poem includes a line from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) and contains details from a 2020 BBC article titled “Ghent Altarpiece: Lamb’s ‘alarmingly humanoid’ face surprises art world.”
I’m having that eye problem again,
the one where my lids inflame,
grease into red wads: bacteria-
clogged, bulbous, miserable.
On a work leave, I’m unpaid,
trying not to drink, trying to write
synonyms for air, failing
to describe grey. The wind-pull
pulls March back to the brink,
a lamb made lion. Snow like
the pearls that were his eyes.
Easter soon, and I think of
the Ghent Altarpiece, the centre panel,
Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,
opened on feast days, a divine
beast erected on an altar,
light enthroning its stoic wool head.
While restoring the Altarpiece,
conservators discovered
the lamb’s face had been modified.
They stripped away paint to restore it
to its original state: un-lamb-like,
plump, angel-pink lips, gaudy
as a children’s drawing, front-set,
fanciful eyes, a sultry, dead-on stare
at onlookers as blood fountains from
its side into a chalice. Nothing wrong
with martyrdom. A good thumb
to suck on. Yes, I blacked out,
but I was hilarious—did you hear
my amusing, priceless tales?
In the news cycle, car fires
and their criminal ties,
as if all ties aren’t criminal,
as if I’m not tied to the men,
their rooms within rooms
within rooms where, in a stupor,
I forgot things: sunglasses,
silver barrettes, my bank card.
In no one’s name did I glide
across chambers. Touched my lips
to no chalice. The painters
who modified the Altarpiece
made the radiant lamb
a trinket of radiance, easy
redemption to blot out
district noise, car fumes,
mute snow, hooded bird song,
for one to see brightness
once burrowed, believe in
the heaven of sacrifice. In my name,
the martyr of bad mornings.
Last Sunday, worse for wear,
I was walking my dog by the canal
when a woman crossing toward
the unhoused encampment
asked if she could pet him.
I picked him up, held him out,
she laid down her shopping bags,
cusped his snout in her hands,
kissed his mouth. “Bonne journée,
madame,” she said, when leaving,
a niceness in the “bonne,” maybe a jeer
in the “dame.” I was madame
in a good coat, my little dog
in his checkered sweater. Gunmetal,
ashen, stratosphere, zephyr.
Please, I wanted to say, please don’t
look at my sullied, spoiled eyes.
