With these two sonnets, this sequence of 600 ekphrastic sonnets, My Human Disguise, is complete.
My Human Disguise, Part One, Sonnet #599
Dear friend, do not forget what is hidden
In both the interstices and behind
The ears and feet and fingers of the mind
Cannot ever be revealed unbidden.
I’m not the human, this disguise you find.
You must call to something else inside me,
A me even I think a mystery.
Both of us stare into the mirror, blind.
Each image we see is pentimento,
The colors laid on increasingly thick,
But like aging time, erring, erratic,
An offering of Now as memento.
I don’t understand “my human disguise.”
I never have. Is it wisdom or lies?
My Human Disguise, Part Two, Sonnet #600
It’s time to put down “My Human Disguise.”
Take off the mask, erase the images.
Enough of playing tyrant with my eyes
To creations of painters and such sages.
At times these acts of synesthesia
Have restored the blank page’s amnesia.
Then I remember I’m not a being,
But only its disguise, a seen seeing . . . .
“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.”
Notes:
1. The concluding quatrain is
from the beginning of Sonnet #1,
“The Art of Painting” (by Vermeer),
from “My Human Disguise.”
2. Since this is a blog, the sonnets are
presented in reverse order. The reader
can start here for the first four sonnets:
My Human Disguise Beginning Sonnets
Click here for the next seven sonnets:
After that, click on "newer posts"
at the bottom of each page.
3. The drawing for these two
sonnets is by Alice Guerin, titled
“Hands and Feet,” and appears as
the cover of the book containing
the first 200 sonnets of “My Human
Disguise,” published by Voca Me Press
in 2016. It also appears with Sonnet #40.
Fort Wayne, 1/15/22