SpokenVerse | Bread and Music by Conrad Aiken (poetry reading) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded March 2012 | Updated October 2024, 6 hours ago.
The paintings are:
Basket of Bread by Salvador Dali
Still Life with Bottle, Carafe, Bread and Wine by Claude Monet
Fruits on a Table by Edouard Manet

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovèd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always, —
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.