The Child’s Bath (1893) | Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
CASSATT’S “THE BATH”
Cherishing warm waters
jutting out at her feet
in the tiny basin
for the delicate daughter
as an extenuation
of a whispering speech
we never hear
only in the tone
of the painting’s
quiet narrative
breathing in a mood
of a pristine interlude
at a Paris drawing room
of an exile,
art shutters down
a boy is not embarrassed
in a studio’s solitude.