Alan Peat

Amalie Zuckerandl

I suppose we are all unfinished Amalie. Imagine if your dress had been a shimmering carpet of ruby and glitter? Certainly, it would be hard to rise above such a field of gold. Your face, my focus, floats above a roughed-out pyramid of you. Pale beneath the pink of your maquillage, I have tried to stare you into speaking; but your lips are unmovable. I have looked longer into your eyes than the eyes of a lover. Wars have come and gone Amelie; so many winters my hair has whitened. And nothing, nothing has changed.

snowmelt
waiting right there
where I left you

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Author’s Note: This is an ekphrastic haibun based on Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl. The work was left unfinished when Klimt died of a stroke in 1918.

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About the Author

Alan Peat is a UK-based poet and author. He was runner-up in the 2021 British Haiku Society’s Ken and Norah Jones Haibun Award and in 2022 won a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. His book of collaborative ekphrastic haibun with Réka Nytrai, Barking at the Coming Rain (Alba Publishing, 2023), is available by e-mailing alanpeat@icloud.com.

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