Paul Delvaux – The Village of the Mermaids by Lisel Mueller

4:00 AM Thursday, April 13th, 2023

Who is that man in black, walking

away from us into the distance?

The painter, they say, took a long time

finding his vision of the world.

The mermaids, if that is what they are

under their full-length skirts,

sit facing each other

all down the street, more of an alley,

in front of their gray row houses.

They all look the same, like a fair-haired

order of nuns, or like prostitutes

with chaste, identical faces.

How calm they are, with their vacant eyes,

their hands in laps that betray nothing.

Only one has scales on her dusky dress.

It is 1942; it is Europe,

and nothing fits. The one familiar figure

is the man in black approaching the sea,

and he is small and walking away from us.