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12 May 2025
Amantine
Brodeur
Full
Moon
La Gioconda
After Emilio Morenattis’ portraiture series,
The Evil That Some Men Do
For Irum Saeed
In cold confinement, dignity dishevels
devils within in you and I, and still venom
colours their blood. In our incomplete
house of tongues, from such sacred clay
and embalmed scars, your beauty’s skinned
into an ancient prayer that stirs skeins of
history: Antigone, from her hollow cave
still sings; ‘My death’s enough ... ’.
And I, sculpted of you, will write poems
of you, out in the open, where they
will roam naked, in their subterfuge.
Behind the poem...
Several years ago I came upon a striking and poignant portrait of Irum Saeed: a Pakistani woman doused in acid after rejecting a marriage proposal. Her strength, poise and dignity, despite the cruelty she suffered, will never leave me. Moved by her brave decision to reveal the extent of her facial scarring, I wrote this poem and dedicated it to her. For me, Saeed is a modern-day La Gioconda; this iconic image a stark reminder of the brutality and indifference of the male violence suffered and endured by women who refuse coercion into ‘love’.