The Bridge Over Chaos (John Martin)

#45

To foresee the event prevents a misfortune.

Constant vigilance is a similar strategy,
As is prayer. Chaos is a man's portion,
Presented to each of us without apology.
Could mankind bridge it for even a minute?
If the world chose just one moment to save,
Say, next Tuesday at noon, a finite
Sixty seconds during which we gave
Our full attention: no rape, no murder,
No manmade or natural disaster,
Could we establish one minute of order?
Or would chaos swirl even faster
And bring even eternity to an end?
Oh, but what a message we'd send!

Christina's World (Wyeth)

#44

My Christina's polio did not break her.
She fought a lifetime of weakness,
And now, so many years later,
Struggles to stay up off the floor.
Years in steel and leather harness
Armed her for perpetual war.
Single, she became a teacher,
Never knew a man to comprehend
How necessary, at times, the wheelchair.
Her students, though, took her hand.
She remembers crawling up the hill,
But not how she got so far from home.
Perhaps her greatest feat of will,
But now, as then, she fights alone.

Note: This sonnet is completely fictionalized. It was inspired, however,
by someone I meet in fourth grade (1963). We both wore leg braces at the time.
She had polio, and I something far less serious. But, the braces were a bond,
of sorts, and we became good friends. We've reconnected in recent
years. She is well and near family.

The Temptation of St. Anthony (Dali)

#43

Temptation does not walk on legs
As long and thin as giraffe stilts.
It stomps like an elephant on eggs
Until it's churned a mess of guilt.
All the legends are full of denial,
As if that's all it took to be godly.
The desert is an empty trial
And determination works, oddly,
Better than love, if all you want
Is not to know physical love, riches,
Beauty, or the power of the tyrant.
I love how the hair shirt itches.
Angry, the Lord said, Make a life!
Work, charity, children, and wife.

". . . out of the air, a zebra appeared, with the face of a man." (Ruth Diamond-Guerin)

#42
That is my face on the zebra's body.
The striped plain is habitat and prison,
But no dream, not even a vision.
Move but slightly, I become nobody.
I can't remember how I came to be.
Perhaps I was bewitched by the gods.
I am a creature against all the odds,
A thinking, feeling singularity.
Animals are defined by their camouflage,
But not men, and I am neither one.
Come, capture me. I can dodge
Your eye -- before you start, you're done.
But, in doing so, I lose myself as well
In this dry, cold, vanishing point of Hell.


Note: This drawing, by my wife Ruth, originally in blue pencil, is based on a character from a long children's story called "A Tale of Tails," which I wrote in the 70's. The zebra's face is mine, 30 years ago.

St. Christopher Carrying the Christ Child (Hieronymus Bosch)

#41

Five years my father spent in WWII
Running a mobile army field hospital.
In New Guinea, he killed an enemy soldier
As he attacked a patient--as would you.
A devout Catholic, he prayed for safe arrival.
To the broad-backed patron of the traveler
He promised to name a child Christopher.
How many men have made a similar offer?
In '69, the Church proclaimed the saint
A myth and struck him from the Calendar,
Nullifying centuries of anxious supplication.
Bosch's work was never daubs of paint.
The universe weighs on every shoulder,
As we lurch towards our next destination.

Hands and Feet (Alice Bea Guerin)

#40

I am not the amalgam of my parts.
Not the knuckles, the joints, the palms.
These are merely the hands of my heart.
I am always hot. I've never been calm.
Sometimes I am nothing but an eye.
Seen through the circle of sight,
The darkness is all I need to know why.
My grinning makes my knuckles white.
My thoughts are like wiggling fingers
And my emotions are clenched fists.
I am my own twisted harbinger.
Look at me. You can't resist.
But we're all skin, sinew and bone,
Running from each other, alone.

Pandemonium (John Martin)

#39

Hortus, a suburban devil of Pandemonium,
Is lonely tonight for want of a loyal friend:
Anyone, sick or foul, human or fiend,
Even a specter enriched with plutonium.
The lights glare like angry souls at the palace,
And the burning rivers between here and there
Drown out the sweet, anguished tintamarre
Of endless victims of others' so-called malice.
Cold comfort for Hortus, who once boasted
The brightest shield and the longest spear,
Who stalked the palace halls without fear,
Now to stand out here, alone and untoasted.
"Curse you all!" he cries, "I don't deserve this!"
But knows there's no leaving Satan's service.

Hawk in Snow (Julia Guerin)

#38

I feel better after snow—
The gray world gone white,
The field a spruce torso.
I am a roaming kite,
Hovering above the mouse
Who dies without a fight.
I swallow, mite and louse,
Leave not one red drop
On that immaculate blouse.
My wings unsheathed, I hop
Into spangled air. Let no
Man think I'll ever stop.
I am only what I know,
That I am because of snow.

Snake Charmer (Henri Rousseau)

#37

My father charmed a cobra with a stick.
In the Philippines, beneath our home,
He pinned it down before it could strike
My sister Laura. We gawked at the thick
Neck, the rearing, fang-edged dome,
Its hissing anger -- then Dad thrust the spike
Through and it fell, as limp as a rope.
The true snake charmer masters hope.
His flute cuts the air into primal prisms,
Then blends them into a waking vision
The reptile remembers and yearns to coil
Its length around and around to warm
Itself, finally to rub its blood into oil,
To never again need do another harm.

Starry Night (Van Gogh)

#36

The Milky Way is a maelstrom of light
Where silence is the only stillness.
The cypress tree can only reach
At what cannot be bound by flight,
Distance being a kind of illness
Of idea, each too far from each.
Daily, I hurl at them a thought,
Even at those so great they would
Encompass Mars from our sun's core.
Wonder cannot be overwrought.
Van Gogh sees them as a flood
Oblivious of us on our lonely shore.
Mountains, trees, and houses are all
We may have, until the stars fall.

Catching a Catfish with a Gourd (Josetsu)

#35

The gourd is the dry brother to the fish.
The curvature of spout and spine
Rhyme with the barrier of the riverbank.
Hard fiber, dark clay, and green flesh
Are his brain, befuddled by wine.
I must make my mind a perfect blank,
He thinks, if I'm to lure the catfish inside.
But the neck is only two inches wide!
That fat fellow is slick and fast as light,
While I would lose a race with mud.
But if I could do it, how sublime!
Clearly, there's no wrong way or right.
The answer pulses in his brain as blood,
Easy as catching an idea with rhyme.

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity (Redon)

#34

The sky, no matter how clear, isn't infinity.
Look up and bring down all that you know.
The eye isn't what allows the mind to see.
Faith is only what we guess from below.
In my dreams the balloon keeps going,
Beyond gravity, planets, the Oort Cloud,
Reaching motionlessness in space, owing
Nothing to speed or distance, allowed
A view, undimmed, of all of creation,
Its perfection, silent, replete, and empty.
There, at the center, is the universe's sun.
The eye, stared down by that blind sentry,
Can only blink and look the other way,
At my head, beneath, swinging on a tray.

Rose in a Tumbler (Mondrian), Sonnet #33

A powder blue flower,
Rose in a short glass,
A seer's whiskey sour,
Nature without surface.
A drawing to surpass
Reality, it grows,
It seems, to embarrass
Red and white roses.
We see the draftsman knows
A multiplying power
(A rose in blooming blows),
Imagination's flower --
All for the glass to think,
And for the eye to drink.

Angel In Mask (Mihail Chemiakin)

#32

Awe of God. Angel terror. The almost
Deadly birds of the soul. Fear
First confronts the heart's ghost
Staring into the prepotent mirror.
The flesh-and-bone-deformed soul
Eludes the quick eye, the pricked ear.
What did we expect: dilating hole
In our forehead, a tiny face—
Grunting, found-out star nose mole?
Only then, in panic, do we embrace:
Eyes closed, silent, still almost
Alone, we feel our warmth trace
The form of the heart and God--one host,
The last masker of his mild race.


Note: This print hangs above the fireplace in my living room, hence the slightly askew photo representation.

Jittoku Laughing at the Moon (Geiami)

#31

The night is without sound.
I slowly push my broom
This way, that, around.
The world is just a room,
Impossible to clean.
I lay my broom down.
Hands behind me, I lean
Toward the moon, frown.
I do not understand.
"Why do you grin?" I ask.
No answer. "Answer and
I'll return to my task!"
His silence thereafter
Silenced by my laughter.

Hui-k'o Cutting Off His Arm (Sesshu)

#30

Just idle anthropomorphizing,
To see a blind monster about to swallow
These two men, or empty philosophizing?
It's only a water-carved cave, after all.
The master stares holes in the cave wall,
As Hui-k'o offers up his severed limb
In angry frustration at being ignored.
A Zen tradition, the teacher's whim,
A simple gesture of emptiness restored
Through which a thousand monsters roar.
Bodhidharma does not blink an eye to see
The wall is both, suffering and ecstasy.
Nothing left for Hui-k'o to know or to teach,
Everything is now beyond his arm's reach.

Shrike (Niten)

#29

The shrike is called a butcher bird.
He impales insect prey on thorns,
Pinned wriggling, eaten at leisure
(Behavior both practical and lurid),
And a pantry to which he returns
When more toxic morsels have cured.
Niten makes us see him from below.
(Is that an upturned face in the leaves?)
He is lord and maker of the universe,
And a hunched and distracted fellow.
He neither exults at death, nor grieves.
He is what is, for better or for worse.
In that face (see it?), such blindness.
A worm prefers the shrike's kindness.

The Rapidity of Sleep (Tanguy)

#28

The sadness of these images is cold,
Mere form and rigid meaninglessness.
A mistake to think of them as a mold
Into which we are invited to press
Anxieties we can't otherwise express.
In dreams, there are clouds and sky
Even when all else is unfamiliar clay
Pressed by idiot fingers. Don't ask why.
Rapidity in sleep is all about delay
And loneliness the abstraction of our day.
What is left of us bows to the obelisk,
A monument to endeavor without risk.
Is there nothing, nothing worth being?
Our only hope is if nothing is fleeting.

Perseus and Andromeda (Joachim Wtewael)

#27

No man has ever ridden a flying horse,
No woman chained as bait for a spiteful
God's sea monster's appeasement.
In modern terms, any man, of course,
Can fight in desperation the rightful
Cause of his woman's safe easement
From hunger, destitution or even death,
At the hands of evil or cowardly men.
No painting of such would take our breath
Away, or make us think god a demon.
No, it is the look on Andromeda's face,
Not hopeful or happy or exhilarated
Or in love, that we believe. Alone of her race,
She accepts what must be, what is fated.

The Whiteblood Vine

#26

By this cinder track, a whiteblood vine
Entangles a towering sycamore
In mockery of human error.
The parasite winds the tree’s spine,
Cleaving to rigidity it lacks,
Like a mind, faithful to facts.
From rooted stem, slim tendrils twine
Up and around every limb,
Grip a higher twig and climb—
Twig to limb, then twig, in stair-step line.
The creeper spreads its mesh;
Greenery sags, desiccated flesh.
The vine and sycamore combine
To create what they undermine.

The Tree of Crows (Caspar David Friedrich)

#25

Only one is firmly perched on its branches.
The others appear to have been scared off,
Or are they all arriving for the night?
We can't be sure which leaves or advances.
No murder of, but a chaos -- none paired off
Like swans or cardinals -- scattered in flight,
Lines in the sky like these thinning limbs,
A picture of someone's desperate screams.
The trajectories of crows are mere whims,
The tree will draw in in orderly streams.
Don't you believe it. The explosion of lines,
Both bird and twig, are devoid of symmetry,
Like thought we can speak, but not define.
Is it a tree of crows or a crow of a tree?

The City Worries (Delvaux)

#24

I am beyond caring while others still worry.
Is my hatred less than those whose fear
Is still fresh, untainted by time's fury?
That bastard destroys our city one tear,
One rape, one sigh, one gasp at a time.
How to act? Pursue a lover, or demur?
Plead forbearance? Preach the sublime
And inevitable end? Or pray for a cure.
The latest come with their breasts over bows,
Some devil's notion of the perfect dress.
(I'd be happy with a simple suit of clothes.)
I see their awful confusion and distress,
But the Black Bowlers are now in control.
Even that beauty there will lose her soul.

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (Hokusai) and Sinbad The Sailor (Klee)

#23

There is nothing to fear in these cartoons.
A wave poised forever and never crashing.
Red ink dripping from a crooked harpoon.
Each a vision unreal, a pictorial fashion.
Then why so much improbable danger,
The depiction of moments of great crisis
In a style so unlike the camera's iris --
To make what we'll never know even stranger?
The artists have painted man against the elements
Or mythological beasts, both mere figments
Of extreme but fake, unnatural commotion,
Riots of color to create a chaos of emotion.
I have killed many such monsters of the deep,
And ridden up and over fatal crests asleep.

Nativity at Night (Geertgen Tot Sint Jans)

#22

The sound of time is the sound of light,
So the morning sun would seem to say;
But now, when it’s either soon or late,
Is silent—dark, when it's any shade of gray.
Infancy (now in its shroud of amnesia)
Saw a thing as it was there to hear
With ecstatic nerves of synaesthesia,
Or like a planet without an atmosphere,
Naked to the bombardment of the stars,
Spun through space. That memory, stored
In our synapses, fights a prolonged war
To glimpse what our mind has barred;
A light the color and the sound of time
We know is not a product of the mind.

Mountain Stream (Ansel Adams)

#21

The stream ran through high mountain pasture
From failing glacier to pool to pond to lake,
Between banks limned with moss and aster
Rooted in cascades of shattered igneous flake.
I straddled the water running slow over stones,
My boots precariously gripping boulders
The water’s rilling shaped into hipbones.
Further up hunched matching shoulders.
I found a head and rolled it in, midstream.
The shallow, muttering water, unperturbed,
Flowed around and on like a vanished dream.
Provoked, I left not a rock undisturbed
And rolled them in -- the addled stream burst
Banks and drowned the mountain pasture’s thirst.

Nessus and Deianeira (Böcklin)

#20

It knows a thing or two, the old painting.

Rather, it knows how to know a thing.
A myth, given enough verisimilitude,
Will make a nymph of a rustic nude.
Only a bared breast betrays the sex
Of a muscled, thick, and ugly torso
And face, a sensory form of Perspex,
Though no woman ever grimaced so.
While not quite conceivably generated,
They are more human, Nessus and Deianeira,
Than all the faces digitized and pixilated
On photographic paper’s white cornea.
The ground lens merely bent and dilated
Light, while here paint fixes the eye on idea.

Innervision (Matta and Brauner)

#19

Spontaneously or under provocation,
Their rude and unconditioned forms
Wish to understand the hidden
Lasciviousness of the higher order,
The internal effective object.
They know its humor and charge.
They condemn the stronger craving
Produced by waiting for silence
And find the escape from the sermon
In listening to she who has come
Uninvented and endlessly variable.
They know that expecting an answer
Is like asking a color to guarantee
There will be no inhibitor of visions.

The Descent From The Cross (Beckmann)

#18

The man being dead is beyond all doubt.
The painter has allowed us no illusions.
The body, tree trunk stiff, with a green cast,
Desiccated, a garden of endless drought,
Will elicit not one prayerful effusion
Of beseeching. All hope has been blasted.
The workers, shocked and careless,
As they are always made by this task,
Quickly hand down the odious carcass,
Their faces dim mirrors of his hard mask.
The woman in red cannot bear to look on,
But the man's mother looks us in the eye,
Challenging us to see beyond the icon
Of death, to see it as she sees it, a lie.

The Old Guitarist

#17

A man is made out of love, or out of music,
If he is made of anything worth being.
But that means that he must be sick
With sadness when love is only a song.
She left me for another and then she died.
Her lover beat me about the head when I cried.
I was defenseless but for this old guitar,
In what had always been a one-sided war.
I wrote a song to forgive her, her treason,
But it has robbed me of my soul, my reason.
You are the face behind my heart, my beloved,
And once were the frets beneath my fingers.
But now they fumble, as if they are gloved.
There is only this of you and me that lingers.


Note: This painting, at the Chicago Art Institute, is a famous example of pentimento. Picasso painted a beautiful woman, and then painted the image of the old guitarist over her. The effect, not apparent in this image, of the woman's vaguely visible outline, suggests the guitarist is singing about her, remembering her.

The Persistence Of Memory (Dali)

#16

The sleep button on the radio aborts

A sentence I complete in my hypnogogic
Muzz: a murdered innocence supports
The new hour’s inexplicable logic.
Blasé nature, having its fill of trees,
Pulls them all up to plant tall,
Thin rocks, become by implausible decrees
A maze’s broken impenetrable wall.
Fleeing memory (as though my years
Exhaust some primal force of variation
As I fitfully doze), they disappear,
Every citizen, from my interior nation.
The voice returns. I rise. Without fear or
Haste, I forget to dress before a mirror.

The Birth Of Venus (Botticelli), Sonnet #15

She attempts what modesty she possesses,
Only hands and improbably long tresses.
There's no wonder that she has been created,
But an urgency to bring her shell to shore,
To cover up her still shocking nakedness.
Sweet Aura seems dazed and elated,
Zephyr and Hora labor grimly to restore
Blindness to our vision of her loveliness.
She is, in her distracted state, already a woman,
Though she's not utterly unmindful of us.
She understands that we are only human:
We have no choice and will worship Venus.
But, it is unclear. Are we to honor her divinity,
Or, as men, become the prey of her virginity?

Still Life With Compotier (Cezanne)

#14

If in fact the apple shadows
The peach on the blue tablecloth
To make it seem riper, does
The empty goblet bend both
Starched napkin white and darkness
From a draped corner of the room
To evoke residue in a chalice
Or lateness in an afternoon?
The apples, green in the silver
Tray, are bronzed, like a bronze pear.
The answer to light is color
And fruit illuminate the air—
But only here inside that frame,
Where apple replaces its name.

Melancholy And Mystery Of A Street (de Chirico)

#13

The young girl rolls her barrel stave,
Hair a banner in stiff wind.
Without even looking at her wand,
She teaches her world to behave.
Not all shadows are slanted the same.
Due to the sunlight or the dusk?
There is nothing sadder than old lust,
More terrible than a child shamed.
The stranger waits, a fist clenched.
All perspective has been wrenched.
He hasn't even seen her yet.
Not time, but light has been suspended.
They are only shadows that will never meet.
Nothing goes on, nothing has ended.

The Village Of The Mermaids (Paul Delvaux)

#12

It is the waiting and not the wanting,
The transit of the day into shadows,
And the perpetual whispered taunting
Of the waves, in their straight, mad rows,
That is so hard for us to bear.
What none of us can know for sure
Has petrified us -- our fingers, faces,
And what is hidden by our dresses.
The architect of our village is gone,
Our seamstress too. Who will call us
To the beach, and call the others home?
The one man here is quite useless.
He wanders the street, chucking our chins,
As if we had more to offer him than fins.

The Mocker Mocked (Paul Klee)

#11

Upon three lines of argument
I’ll construct an actor’s mask
To say what is, not what is meant,
Should a reflective audience ask.
First, “Nipples make the thumb
Feel glad about its thumbing task.”
Second, “The tongue cannot outdrum
The quarrel fought between the ears.”
Last, “Our bodies eventually come
To satisfy our deepest fears.”
Now, dear friends, with your consent,
I’ll put this on. Hm, it appears
They consider my grin indecent.
I’m booed when I expected cheers!

Carnival of Harlequin (Miro)

#10

We are the carnival of harlequin.
There is no shape or color we can't take
To paint emotions, virtue, wit, or sin.
No one would recognize as real or fake
An eye without a smile or cats sans paws
In such a place. Our singing makes it seem
A foolishness of us to hide our flaws.
So do not think that seem can rhyme with dream.
We are as real as you, if you are real.
You look at us and do not understand
The way we look at you. The sad appeal
We make for life is all a joke, all canned.
There's nothing in our act that you'll believe,
So look away. We'll watch you as you leave.

Winter Landscape (Sesshu)

#9

Black and white, foreground,

Background, horizon and sky—
There is nothing to describe.
No word for it has been found.
Fingers pinch bits of glass,
Mouths blow rings of gas.
Stone spires, numberless grass,
Poised like celebrants at mass.
This is but approximation,
Sounds approaching shape,
Silhouetted imagination,
Not a poem, but its ape.
Inked paper, here, in your hand—
This is what you understand.

I-70

#8

Chasing Kansas twisters, I interrupt
The moon floating above a thunderhead,
God pondering his coffee cup.
The locust lullaby in the trees
Is a song to stars, or to the dead:
Fireflies die where I cannot see.
Above the hood, the shuffling storm
Is a man on his knees, slobbering,
Roaring for his severed arm.
Behind, the sky is empty and clear.
The earth recedes quickly, quivering:
Ground heat cracks the icy air.
The radio reports a sighting—
Funnels by flash of lightning.

Another World (M. C. Escher)

#7

At the cold core of a molecule
Something sentient ratiocinates
In mathematical ridicule
Of everything that loves or hates.
It has one goal, one idea,
Which is for the molecule to be a
Functioning integer in a sum
For articulation of a vacuum.
I have seen molecules with faces
Posed in momentary stasis.
How they smile. Knowing, simply,
But in fact, that they are in control,
They smile and stare unblinkingly
Beyond the nucleus of my soul.

HELL

#6

Not chaos, because each moment is real,
Here is where you learn to learn.
Instruments, musical and scientific,
Tools, the blade in particular, reveal
There is no progress, only return
To the moment, each moment horrific.
Fires illuminate. No passion or fury
Drives your jailers, only the calm stare
Of the man made of egg and tree
With feet of boats, whose inside is air.
Eaten and shat, pierced and hanged
By creatures cobbled from your fears,
You'll endure, pipes blown, drum banged,
Harp rasped, without your ears.

(The right panel of Hieronymus Bosch's
famous triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights".)

To view the entire work on a single page, click here.

THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

#5

Here there is no thing I cannot kiss,
No texture or form I cannot caress.
We've learned how to smile from birds,
From beasts the uselessness of words.
I've spent my hours in the glass globe,
In bubbles of wood, shell, and rind.
I have ridden the pard and the antelope
(And, in secret, the female of my kind).
We do what we're meant to do, it seems.
Why else stroke fish, feed apples to owls,
Perform handstands in midstream,
Or let birds nest on our bowels?
Childless, we treat bloated fruit like toys.
We enjoy it all, of course, but without joy.

(The middle panel of Hieronymus Bosch's
famous triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights".)

To view the entire work on a single page, click here.

PARADISE

#4

How many eyes have seen the sun?
In the beginning, there were only four
That, commanded by an invisible power,
Could see nothing not part of a One.
Yes, it was beautiful and safe, though strange.
So much, like the sun, meant to be liked,
But not touched, seductive but spiked --
That terrifying fountain and mountain range.
They should not grasp what they couldn't use
When creatures went by in ones, not twos.
After a leopard dragged off and ate its prey,
They began to think, to create. When the Lord
Appeared to explain the snake, they ran away.
What was said no painting could record.

(Panel One from Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights".)

To view the entire work on a single page, click here.

The Mediterranean Cat

#3

The rainbow rises from the churning bay,
Colors cleaving into sea bass and mullet
Flung down upon the cat man's plate.
Bread, a lemon and a pale rose'
Will soon course down his gullet.
(The monstrous boiled lobster can wait.)
Is it only food that cheers him? Triumphant,
That grin, rapacious and tense,
Could rival the glower of an elephant
For anthropomorphic confidence.
And what of the little girl in her canoe
Waving goodbye, or is it hello?
She doesn't smile. She hasn't a clue
How to ride that storm-born rainbow.

The Art of Painting

The Art of Painting (Johannes Vermeer) Sonnet #1

He draws aside the brocaded curtain

As if to reveal an intimacy

Tantamount to an indiscretion,

Though it is just to allow us to see

A portrait painter paused at his easel,

And his model, a young woman demure

Beyond conceiving, who, a tease, will

Smile, eyes closed, supremely sure

The man has never seen a lovelier.

Perhaps the painter never has either,

And though he has a warm affection

For searing late afternoon sunlight,

For stillness rendered into perfection,

It is all a blind for sexual delight.

St. Jerome Penitent (by Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse), Sonnet #2

Trees are crosses and this cross a tree.

The man is diminished by hanging,

Not by his suffering -- which is only a fee

In return for what is beyond questioning --

But by the distance between himself and the earth.

There are two ways to respond to such love,

By kneeling and by not kneeling. Let death,

Which has no meaning below or above,

Being only the Sphinx with no riddle to ask,

Stop its shallow breathing just long enough

To confirm the man in his eternal task.

Let him answer silence with a barking cough. 

Only then shall I climb that tree as well

Without fear of heaven or hope of hell.

Here is another poem about St. Jerome: 
http://christopherguerin.blogspot.com/2010/05/st-jerome.html
 

Apropos Kafka

Ivebeenreadinglately: Against interpretation, against allegory, for Kafka

The Metametamorphosis, a short story

(With apologies to F.K.)

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a small insect. Having also fallen out of bed, he wasn’t sure at first what upset him the most. Spinning slowly on his back on the hardwood floor, Gregor gazed up at the edge of the bed, which looked exactly like the white cliffs of Dover, or at least like a bed the size of the white cliffs of Dover. Maybe my bed has grown to be as big as the white cliffs of Dover, thought Gregor. He lifted his head a little and saw his brown pot-shaped belly, which seemed only a bit darker than he remembered. He saw his numerous, barb-heeled, incessantly gesticulating legs, much thinner than his legs usually look, and he thought, if I had to say, I suppose falling out of bed is less objectionable than waking up in a state of transmogrification.

What has happened to me? he thought. I’ve turned into a bug, that’s what. But what kind of bug? A cockroach? A cockroach is flat in shape and I am anything but flat. I’m convex, belly and back. Really, I’m like a cockroach, only in that I am brown. But let me pursue this. My belly is divided into segments, it would seem, though it’s difficult to see. I have a hard rounded back, surely suggestive of wing cases. That’s it! The cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded to carry me for miles in a blundering flight. Further, I have strong mandibles. Who ever saw a cockroach with mandibles! Indeed, I have assumed the shape of a beetle, a stag beetle, or a cockchafer perhaps.

His room, a normal bedroom, only rather too gigantic, lay quiet between the four familiar walls, behind two blind-drawn windows. Above the table, on which – beyond his vision – lay a collection of cloth samples, unpacked and spread out (Samsa was a fashion designer) hung the photograph, from a magazine, of his latest creation. It showed a lady in a fur coat and cap that covered her from head to toe, with the hem drawn tight around her ankles, and into which her entire body had vanished! Only two beady little eyes peeked out between the fur collar and the fur brim of her cap. He couldn’t see it in the photo, but Gregor knew that behind the collar the woman wore a frown.

“Ah, Grete!” Gregor sighed, “You are lovely, I’ll grant you that.”

Gregor’s eyes turned to the window, where raindrops falling made him quite sad and melancholy. Why don’t I sleep a little longer and forget about all this nonsense? But he couldn’t sleep; he could only sleep on his side. However violently he tried to roll over he always rolled onto his back again. The sight of his legs flailing about was a constant irritation. I’ll bet real beetles don’t have this problem, he thought. He gave it up only when it occurred to him that all the stress he was laying on his back might damage his little wings and he might never get a chance to fly.

“No,” he said to himself aloud, “relax. Go with it.”

Gregor stared up at the ceiling, which was like a white sky, with a globe fixture luminous as the moon. He remembered that whenever he’d taken it down to change the bulb, it was always full of dead, dry insects.

This sleeping late, he thought, makes one stupid. Other people get up at a decent hour and come home to a pleasant evening in front of the fireplace. I didn’t get in till 4 this morning, at least. My head! Grete pouring me all the Courvoisier! If I ever make it in this business, big enough to afford putting Mom in a home where she belongs, I’ll just have to settle down. But with whom? he wondered. Not Grete! She only loves me for my connections.

He looked at the clock on the dresser. Would you believe it? he thought, it’s only noon! I can’t live on less than ten hours sleep. Without his blanket, which was nowhere to be seen, probably tied into knots on top of the bed as usual, Gregor would never back to sleep on the cold, hard floor. In fact, he didn’t feel the least bit drowsy.

This is silly, he thought. I may as well get up, put on that new pinstripe I’ve been dying to wear all week, and go down to the studio. Nobody but Chester will be there, but perhaps I can do a few more sketches for the gala this fall. If I can sell them on that bottomless leotard, I’ll be as rich as everyone thinks I am.

Fully resolved to get to his feet, Gregory tried rocking back and forth, stretching his head back and to one side like a turtle. He rocked ferociously. I’m like a cradle! he thought. But it soon began to hurt. The top of his head ached so much, he wondered if he wouldn’t pass out from the pain. At all costs, he must not lose consciousness, not when he’d made up his mind to put in an extra two hours of work that day.

With joy, Gregor discovered that he had made some progress after all. He was now much closer to one of the wheels attached to a leg at the head of the bed. If he would move within reach of the wheel by continued rocking, he might grab hold of it and lever himself onto his legs.

He began to rock himself as furiously as before. He would have to nerve himself mightily to withstand the pain long enough to reach the wheel, which was, he noticed with some irritation, absolutely filthy with dust and other questionable matter. Then the doorbell rang. “Who in hell could that be?” Gregory groaned. His whole body twitched from the frightful pain in his head; his legs jigged wildly, like dancing exclamation marks. He was barely an inch away from the wheel. An inch, an eternity, Gregor thought with despair. He began to repeat over and over, “Why me? Why me?”

“Is he up?” asked Chester when Gregor’s mother opened the door.

“Are you kidding?” came her feeble croaking whisper.

“Something terrible has happened!” cried Chester.

Hearing the words, Gregor didn’t wait for his mother’s response. He rocked as hard as he could. The pain set his thoughts spinning.

He’s got troubles? What’s it now? His boyfriend’s moved out again? A drop of gravy’s fallen on his blue suede shoes? It had better be terrible for him to disturb me in the middle of the day. Yet, I can’t let him see me like this, and Mother would have a coronary! This would be her biggest shocker since Dad left her for that cosmetician, K. The way she sits in that chair knitting God knows what, day after day, year after year. She never knitted anything for me, that’s all I know. Now it looks like the thumb, just the thumb of a glove is all I’d need. I must get to my feet. I must!

As Chester rapped the bedroom door, Gregor felt the edge of the wheel against his left side. I’ve done it! he thought.

“Gregor? You up?” Chester asked.

“Go away,” Gregor responded. “Can’t you let a man sleep? I was up with Grete until God knows when. The poor kid’s driving me crazy with her ambitions. Even I can’t help her. I mean I won’t help her. And nothing you can say can make me, so leave me alone. I need my sleep. I’ll see you at three, as always.”

Saying all this in a tone of voice Gregor felt remarkable for its civility under the circumstances, he managed to grab hold of the dirty wheel that was, now that he was right under it, as big as a room. He was gratified to discover that his little legs each had a sticky substance on the soles. By pulling at the wheel from a gradually lower and lower position with his left legs, and steadying himself with his right legs, Gregor finally managed to turn himself over and to stand on his feet.

“Gregor? You there?” said Chester, sounding more and more anxious.

Chester’s apparent deafness vexed Gregor. Hadn’t he provided more than sufficient dismissal of the fellow? What a pest he was! Gregor shouted, “Damn you, Chester! Get the hell out of here. I’ll see you at 3 and not a minute sooner.”

“Did he come home last night, Mrs. Samsa?”

“I didn’t hear him, Chester. Not that I ever listen,” said Gregor’s mother, “I got to bed at ten o’clock like all good God-fearing people.”

“The door’s locked, but I don’t think he’s in there. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s there,” Chester said in a voice tearful and quavering.

Gregor’s mother said, “That would be about the size of it in any case.”

That’s it! Gregor thought. She’s starting in again and he’s in one of his states! If he weren’t so clever with needle and thread, I’d have sacked him years ago.

Then a thought struck Gregor, clearing his mind of everything else.

“Wait a minute!” he said aloud, “I'd nearly forgotten.”

Gregory had remembered his wings.

“Gregor! Wake up. Unlock the door. I must talk to you,” shouted Chester. 

“Something horrible has happened!”

“Call me if you raise him, Chester,” Gregor’s mother said, “I’ve got work to do, but I would like to give him a piece of my mind. He hasn’t paid the rent this month!”

Hearing his mother trudge off, Gregor scurried under the bed, feeling more and more sure of his legs every second. He flexed this muscle and that, searching for the right ones. He could feel the hard shell of his back split apart.  He could hear the crackle, like wax paper, of his wings unfolding. He tried other muscles. All of a sudden, he jumped. Astounding! His first airborne experience! He jumped again. Ouch! His head hit one of the enormous metal spirals under the bed. Wait a minute, he thought, let me get out of here before I brain myself. Away from the massive roof of the bed, Gregor tensed the now-familiar muscles and up he went. “Yikes!” screaked Gregor, veering to his right just as he was about to collide with a brass floor lamp. “Wheeee!” Gregor flew, rather blunderingly, about the room. He’d never felt so wonderful in his entire life.

“Gregor? Unlock the door!” Chester yelled.

Damn him, thought Gregor. He’ll never leave. Well, if he wants to see me, then he’ll just have to see me. Mother, too. And the Devil take them both. I can fly! There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.

Veering unsteadily, he made several practice runs at the doorknob. Now, he thought, I’ve got to be going slowly when I land so that the sticky stuff on my feet grabs on and my momentum doesn’t pull me loose. His next two passes were just slightly too fast. I’ve got to hone my timing, he thought. Concentrate. Careful. Then, there he was, standing on the doorknob, sawing precariously. He steadied himself and sheathed his wings.

“I did it!” Gregor shrieked.

The key, Gregor thought. Trusting his ability to cling to even the smoothest surface, he crawled under the great brass ball of the doorknob, onto the wall, and down to the key. Now for the hard part, he thought. Tensing the muscles in his face – there seemed to be dozens of them – he soon found what he was searching for. The mandibles opened effortlessly. He snapped them shut; they made a great, scraping noise. “Ooooo, how terrifying!” he screamed with delight. As he bit the disc of the key, he heard Chester’s voice booming through the door.

“Gregor, if you’re there, please come out. She’s thrown herself from Brooklyn Bridge! Oh, Grete! What could you have done to her, Gregor?”

His great jaws gripped the hard key and his body swiveled across the round brass plate of the lock. An indescribable pain shot through Gregor. Brown fluid dropped from his mouth and the meaning of Chester’s words seared his brain. He dropped to the floor.

Chester could have sworn he’d heard a noise, ever so soft, from Gregor’s bedroom. He began to fear the Grete’s death – “Gregory, I’ll see you in hell!” her note had read – was not the only one. A suicide pact? he wondered. Quite besides himself, he ran to Mrs. Samsa’s bedroom.

“Mrs. Samsa!” Chester cried, “He still doesn’t answer. But I heard a noise. I’m afraid something’s happened.”

“Something terrible?” asked Mrs. Samsa, cocking her head to one side.

“Yes!”

She looked up at him, rocking comfortably, a twinkle in her tiny old eyes.

“He doesn’t know it, but I have a key.”
 

“Get it!” Chester shouted. “For God’s sake, Mrs. Samsa, get it!”

The tinny, rasping sound of his mother’s key in the lock brought Gregor back to consciousness. He was on his back once again. His wings, having spread during the fall – perhaps, instinctively, to break it – felt crumpled and torn beneath him.

“Grete!” he moaned, remembering, “you loved me?!” He saw her young body stretching, her long, wingless flight down.

The door opened, swinging over him with a great blast of wind, blowing him halfway across the room and flipping him onto his feet again.

“There’s nobody here!” shouted Chester hysterically.

“Greetings!” said Gregor, gritting his mandibles against the pain, determined to put the best face on his predicament

“Ugh! A cockroach,” Mrs. Samsa ejaculated.

The last thing Gregor knew was his mother’s shiny black shoe descending upon him like that of some colossal goddess.

Copyright 2014

Christopher Guerin

1222 W. Rudisill Blvd.

Fort Wayne, IN 46807

cguerin@aol.com

(260) 409-9541