Etched
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi is said to have modelled Liberty’s stern face on his older brother, a lawyer who died in an asylum on 1 April 1885. This short poem sits with that silence.
As you sat with your older brother,
a lawyer, a stickler for words,
who had stopped answering —
that forlorn, unresponsive face
etching itself behind your eyes
until you gave it to the harbour
and called it Liberty?
My brother sat with me like that
through the schizophrenic years,
learning my face by heart.
Whatever he saw there, he kept.
He is delighted
that I am yearning to be free.
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More from the archive:
Is the Statue of Liberty Bartholdi’s Brother?
The Candid Verse at Bartholdi’s Wharf
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