The Storm (Munch), Sonnet #268

An imp stamping in the attic,
The storm drives us and the neighbors
Into the street -- young widows, whores,
Lions -- hair spiked in the static.
The mansion is a locked fortress,
Lighthouse windows, chimneys cannon,
Twin sirens keening off and on.
The wind whips hard to undress us
As we trip on the paving stones
No one in the city owns.
When the trees swipe at the windows,
Rebuffed, torn black branches falling
Upwards, we hear babies bawling
As they fly by -- duck their wee blows.

The Scream

I

Such a twilight
has no history,
nor would this nobody
rigid in the clutch
of his own two hands
in front of a sky
no longer his sky.
Two men walking away
are too nonchalant
to have seen his face
and stopped; therefore,
it must have looked
different than now.
Did he see fear
in their faces
or the fear
they saw in his?
The bridge rail
and the black river
connect all three
like testimony
and conspire
to convince them.

II

A red dusk
is sunlit pollution,
so it is not sick
churning colors
and nauseous chaos
of sand and sky
writhing in the same
two dimensions
that move,
because these
are all too real.
Not like that mouth,
that woeful oval.
As the vanishing point
is absent
from the painting,
from that mouth
no word flies,
nor any sound at all.