Old Photograph

Old Photograph
by Archibald MacLeish

There she is. At Antibes I’d guess
by the pines, the garden, the sea shine.

She’s laughing. Oh, she always laughed,
at cameras. She’d laugh and run
before that devil in the lens could catch her.
He’s caught her this time, though: look at her
eyes — her eyes aren’t laughing.

There’s no such thing as fragrance in a photograph
but this one seems to hold a fragrance —
fresh-washed gingham in a summer wind.

Old? Oh, thirty maybe. Almost thirty.
This would have been the year I went to Persia —
they called it Persia then — Shiraz,
Bushire, the Caspian, Isfahan.
She sent me the news in envelopes lined in blue.
The children were well. The Murphys were angels:
they had given her new potatoes sweet as peas
on a white plate under the linden tree.
She was singing Melisande with Croiza —
“mes longues cheveux.” She was quite, quite well.
I was almost out of my mind with longing for her.

There she is that summer in Antibes —
laughing
with frightened eyes.