Anfisa Osinnik

Renoir

Renoir liked to enlarge women's eyes,
giving roundness to cheeks and lips.
Renoir liked to play with women's hair.
Excellent painter and magnificent hatter,
every hat in his pictures shouts:
I'm the spirit of nature!
When he mixed crimson, cobalt and cinnabar on his pallet,
the oil in the paint turned solar,
the sun took unceremonious walks on his canvases
without noticing the frame.
The day he died
was gray, gray, gray,
or maybe it wasn't,
or maybe he died at night.
But I think that his spirit,
looking at his own portrait
in the frame of the coffin, thought:
Here's my worst picture.
                                   Then the spirit fled,
                                   surely towards the sun,
                                   surely to step on women's hats,
                                   surely to portray angels
                                   with enlarged eyes,
                                   with round cheeks
                                   and fleshy lips.
                                   Of course the angels
                                   wear hats now;
                                   the angels like
                                   natural beauty turned spiritual.