A person sits in a room but seems more statue than living body: stone-cut lines, hollow eyes, hair like a carelessly thrown wig. The speaker watches as even speaking fails to animate this figure. Words drift out tiredly, like sleepy birds, and the hands move as if reaching for an emotion that is already dying. The mood is muted, dreamlike, and a little eerie. It feels like being near someone who has already withdrawn emotionally. By twilight, the speaker says they have “long since passed out of the room,” though they are still physically there. The title “Portraits” fits that sense of a frozen, studied image — a person captured but not truly present, and a shared moment already fading before it ends.
Portraits — Summary
You were in the room, yet your body Was stone cut in drooping lines And hued with decorous puzzling pinks and browns. Even your hair seemed an elfin wig Carelessly thrown upon your stone head. And your eyes were hollows cradling broken shadows. When you spoke your body did not change: It was as though a flock of sleepy birds Had issued from your stone mouth. Vague words tapered off to pale weariness, And sunlight was night smiling in his sleep. Your hands moved as though they sought a dying emotion: Your lips, drawn back, seemed evading sound. When twilight fell upon us, Like night striving to forget his dream, We had long since passed out of the room.