A Grain of Mustard Seed: Poems Dutch InteriorPieter de Hooch (1629-1682)I recognize the quiet and the charm,This safe enclosed room where a woman sewsAnd life is tempered, orderly, and calm.Through the Dutch door, half open, sunlight streamsAnd throws a pale square down on the red tiles.The cosy black dog suns himself and dreams.Even the bed is sheltered, it encloses,A cupboard to keep people safe from harm,Where copper glows with the warm flush of roses.The atmosphere is all domestic, human,Chaos subdued by the sheer power of need.This is a room where I have lived as woman,Lived too what the Dutch painter does not tell—The wild skies overhead, dissolving, breaking,And how that broken light is never still,And how the roar of waves is always near,What bitter tumult, treacherous and cold,Attacks the solemn charm year after year!It must be felt as peace won and maintainedAgainst those terrible antagonists—How many from this quiet room have drowned?How many left to go, drunk on the wind,And take their ships into heartbreaking seas;How many whom no woman’s peace could bind?Bent to her sewing, she looks drenched in calm.Raw grief is disciplined to the fine thread.But in her heart this woman is the storm;Alive, deep in herself, holds wind and rain,Remaking chaos into an intimate orderWhere sometimes light flows through a windowpane.
