Mirrors, Sonnets #194 and #195

The False Mirror (Magritte), Sonnet #195

That sense of void, when the stranger in the mirror
Doesn't know you either, will not evaporate
Until a moment passes, as though time is fear,
And nothing vanishes between the soon and late.
I seldom question why I know which me is me.
My eyes are nearly always blue with flecks of gold.
It's when I'm caught unaware that eternity
Stares vacantly with a face neither young nor old.
Other times, the wonder at myself is so strong,
So unbelieving, I think something got it wrong:
How can my next few thoughts be anything but theirs,
Whoever they are, and the near-cloudless blue sky
Be mine (and don't chalk it up to mental errors),
Because it's mirrored in the pupil of my eye?

Starry Night Over The Rhone (Van Gogh), Sonnet #194

Today the stars are almost gone.
City lights have taken their place;
Their halogen fixtures erase
Them as thoroughly as the sun.
I lived on a river; some nights
I'd lie down on a pier and look
At rays I didn't dare to name,
As though I didn't have the right
To remember stars from a book
And think what I saw was the same.
Sometimes I'd watch Polaris fly
In the river, which made it grow
And blink like the eye of a crow
That could see itself in the sky.

Cafe Terrace at Night (Van Gogh)

#48
For Ruth

Is there just one universe?
There the stars and here the cafe.
Hidden lights illuminate the tables.
The various darknesses immerse
Men and stars in dissolving clay.
Are both god and science fables?
The universes are infinite,
They say, and time does not exist.
But here we are and there the stars.
The air is full of perfume and wit,
And a wine too ancient to resist.
All else is beyond, late and far.
Let's nibble galaxies and swallow suns.
I'll count my hours with you by ones.

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.