The dream of Basil Hallward

Your image
reaches me and leaves me
like a muse.

On your forehead like strokes
I see footprints of memories.

And like a fugitive,
foreseeing that I’m arriving,
your skin is a canvas that unravels.

Basil Hallward is the name of a character in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is the artist that actually paints the portrait.

Some time later I rewrote this poem in Spanish; and even later, in 2007, that translation became the base for the lyrics to the song El Sueño de Basil Hallward for my band Teatro Fantasma.
      El sueño de Basil Hallward