Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais and The Tree of Tule, Sonnet #444

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My Human Disguise.

Say that not all works of beauty are willed.

For centuries freemasons tried to build

A spire 500 feet into the sky,

Which collapsed three times and was abandoned.

They settled for the real, but had to try —

Just one of the lessons it taught Rodin.

The Tule tree has the same architecture —

Chthonian, with buttresses, gargoyles,

All the result of a wild conjecture

And intent and the fruit of endless toils.

In truth, there’s nothing that’s not beautiful,

Nothing not made; even nothing is willed.

Everything is essence, blind, dutiful,

Perfect if at times imperfectly skilled.

The Thinker (Auguste Rodin), Sonnet #443

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My Human Disguise.

A problem with the “hard problem” —

How can this muscle mass and bone

Topped off with a refulgent shell,

Medulla and a tapered stem,

Obliterate being alone?

Thought isn’t thought in a locked cell.

Until we see eyes see, tongues talk,

Our eyes and tongues are chunks of chalk.

Rodin meant us to see an act.

His Thinker is an angel fact,

A nothing without us to see, 

Though it’s hard for us to believe.

No, it’s we think, we are — we weave

Each thought from you and you and me.

Alpine Landscape (Giovanni Segantini), Sonnet #442

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My Human Disguise.

He’d seen these mountains in many places,

In dreams through the eyes of countless faces,

In gilded frames stacked in storefront windows —

Oils, inks, pastels, pencils, grainy photos —

Each some dauber’s idea of a mountain,

Gravel dredged from a glorious fountain.

He’d climbed many times to the timberline

Before he’d drawn his first sketches — no sign

Of life must mar the purity of quartz,

Schist, granite, feldspar, molded by ages

Of the elements’ incessant rages.

Intentionally, his paintbrush distorts

What is seen, reducing it to hatches,

Creating mountains from tiny scratches.

Deep Universe, Sonnet #441

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My Human Disguise.

For Michael Antman

How can something be older by virtue

Of simply being farther away than . . . .

And there the most unlikely shrouds the true,

Which is quite the same as what is human.

A woman doing dishes sees a star.

Steam rises and the boy is in his bed.

A small second star shines sooner by far,

She thinks — the night sky is a tangled thread.

She thinks — begin, starlight, to bless this home.

You’ve had long enough to see me see you

From infinite sparks in your eternal dome.

All must live. All. Must. Live. The old and new.

She rinses and dries her hands with a towel.

Lights off, the stars wince at her avowal.

Winter (Giuseppe Arcimboldo), Sonnet #440

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My Human Disguise.

I am old and my blood won’t thaw.

I am the end. My lips are mold.

As if I execute some law,

I imprison all with the cold,

The icy and the bitter winds,

Punish spring’s, fall’s, and summer’s sins.

My eyes, nose and cheeks rot and cake.

A few green leaves cling to me still —

My young branches refuse to die.

It’s time to summon the first flake —

My sole star only time can kill —

And then to open up the sky.

When all is buried I will sleep

A tearless world that will not weep.

The Punishment of Luxury (Giovanni Segantini), Sonnet #439

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My Human Disguise.

Inured to wind or rain, the women rest

On a bed of air, draped in silken sheets,

Sated on honeyed wine and creamy sweets,

Their flaxen tresses framing each bared breast.

Though their eyes are closed, we can’t be sure

They’re sleeping, if they are dreamt or dreaming.

They throw dim shadows from a star beaming

Dimly distant and reluctantly pure.

It’s late winter and the snow starts to thin.

Even the mountains’ snowcap is shrinking.

We can’t know what the women are thinking.

Perhaps they hope that spring vanquishes sin.

Dear ones, where are the men? They sin as well.

Is your punishment their heaven or hell?

Pallas and the Centaur (Botticelli), Sonnet #438

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My Human Disguise.

The centaur, about to loose an arrow,

As he often did, just to kill a thing,

Without a reason he would ever know,

Loved to hear the snapping of his bow string.

There was no party he wouldn’t disrupt,

No innocent love he didn’t corrupt.

We have men, part ass, just like him today

Who do even more harm with what they say.

The beast had his Pallas to grab his hair

And yank it hard to arrest his error.

Who’ll be our goddess of right and reason,

To fight, for us, the centaurs of treason —

Those not-even-half-men who live to steal

The meals and drink of the commonweal?