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The Sévres Road

By Susan Donnelly b. 1939 Susan Donnelly

Camille Corot's painting, stolen from the Louvre, May 1998

It might have always been meant

that they walked completely away,

this man on horse, woman with basket.

With their backs to us and the painter,

they are so private. But like those stories

where children step right into a picture

and, looking over their shoulders,

see the consoling frame,

these two would know the way home

like the palms of their hands, the routine

so ordinary it most encloses,

no need for thought, only motion

and the full sensation of sun

on your flesh, along the usual road.

Source: Poetry (June 1999).

Biography

Of Irish American heritage, Susan Donnelly was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, and raised in Brookline, outside of Boston. She earned a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Her poetry collections are Eve Names the Animals (1985), winner of the Samuel French Morse Prize, Transit (2001), and Capture the Flag (2009). Donnelly’s poems have been published in numerous anthologies, including The . . .

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