Stacks of Wheat, End of Day, Autumn (Claude Monet), Sonnet #551

 

Most of my dreams are black and white,

A sickly world lit by moonlight.

Golden wheat under setting sun

Igniting quickly fades to dun,

To dim, to shadow, then to black.

A full moon won’t bring colors back.

Night is no dream, but serious.

Even if it hinders vision,

We can’t become delirious —

We’ve no excuse for misprision.

Fear is something other, the end

(Not of meaning or misreading,

The touch of warm flesh, or needing)

Of sight only the sun can mend.

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The Monk by the Sea (Caspar David Friedrich), Sonnet #529

The rock shelf doesn’t hold the sea

In place, thought the monk, rather say,

Water will accept a boundary

Because that is the given way.

He has learned little all these years;

How to eat, walk, but not to think,

But in the vanquishing of fears —

Little stones thrown in the sea sink.

He fears most the fog’s unwinding,

Like cloth from a bolt, the blinding,

When the sun’s lost sight of his eyes.

Then there's no telling fog from self.

He’s moveless till the wind rises.

A step might send him off the shelf.

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Tree Roots (Van Gogh), Sonnet #526

For years we thought Vincent Van Gogh’s

Last painting was “Wheatfield with Crows,”

With its dirt road lost among rows

Of autumn grain that wave and glow,

Crows flying wild, a beckoning

Toward dark skies and reckoning.

And now? These gnarled tree roots, exposed

By wind and rain, gripping the soil,

Image of the ageless, unposed,

Riotous like his mental moil.

His vision turned to the abstract,

The canvas stabbed with daubs or smears,

As though more paint would reveal fears

Clutched inside against his final act.

Note: For many years, Wheatfield with Crows

was considered his final painting. Recent

discoveries have indicated that Tree Roots

was in fact his last work. Though there are 

competing theories, the Van Gogh Museum 

in Amsterdam's official conclusion is that 

the painter committed suicide with a pistol

soon after completing Tree Roots.

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Storm (Sesson Shukei), Sonnet #501

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The mighty sea is slave to storms

And fishing boats slaves to the sea

As men are enslaved by all three.

The deck, stout mast, and taut sail form

The only threat to fend off death.

The sea drowns beneath the typhoon,

What men call an angry god’s breath,

Waves caused by his stirring his spoon.

A gibbous moon runs through the clouds.

Suns skip among the fog and haze.

In a lull, waves, in rows, look plowed,

Then boil in an unsolvable maze.

The ship sights land, rocky, tree-lined,

Safe harbor for the terror-blind. 

State Street Bridge, Sonnet #492

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The fourth son sat in the middle

Of the back seat as his father

Drove them around their new home town.

For being twelve, he was little,

Wore a brace of steel and leather.

His Mom told him to settle down

When he complained he was hungry.

The streets were unplowed slush and ice.

The river hadn’t frozen twice.

His parents always seemed angry.

He’d remember this wandering drive,

How no one laughed or even spoke

(As if their new home held no hope),

Snowblind to renewing life. 

Strong Dream (Paul Klee), Sonnets #471 and #472

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#471

I ask myself, who dreams the dream?

In real time “I” experience

Oddities and “life.” Like a beam

Flashed along a picket fence,

“I” find in each gap an event —

From where inside me was it sent?

“I” play a game of pool and lose.

“I” feel the loss, see the table.

Who changes the scene? “I” didn’t choose.

Now “I’m” gliding as if on a cable.

There is another I in the “I” —

Stage manager and audience.

It’s stronger than “I.” This dreaming eye

Sees “me” seeing the picket fence.

#472

He dreamed the sun devoured by the moon.

He dreamed the moon deflowered by the sun.

The stars blinked their tiny eyes at the ruin.

His slinging guitar became a shotgun

And with one blast picked off every star

Then turned back into a slinging guitar.

He took off his wings when he went to sleep.

They kept him as warm as the woolen sheep

Of old counting — that didn’t work at all.

So warm his feet and face had turned brick red,

He rode into a lukewarm waterfall

On a black mule, back as wide as a bed.

I saw all this through his closed eyes, not mine,

Yet he wrote this goggling, every line.

Landscape with Lanterns (Paul Delvaux), Sonnet #461

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The doorways are too small for grown women,

Who’re as tall as the ever-lit street lamps.

This is a city of unspoken sin,

Surrounded by ancient stones and armed camps.

Litter bearers take angels to the lake,

Where wing-naked once again they wake

In the warm waters off the stoney shore

Only to find that they’re angels no more.

On the flagstone street a mother, praying

Or reading from a book, awaits the Change,

The moment when she and all her daughters

No longer hear what men are unsaying,

When all they’ve understood becomes deranged

And their minds (if not their souls) are slaughtered.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, “Sue” (Field Museum), Sonnet #460

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It’s thought s/he was a filthy scavenger, 

Like rats, roaches, or the turkey vulture.

Her arms were just too small and weak to fight,

And all a ruse that prodigious bite!

Absurd, a monster roaming on and on

Looking for whose leftover carrion?

They say volcanoes or an asteroid

Killed them all off in a few years or days,

Leaving earth a dark and near-lifeless void,

Blind for millennia to solar rays.

I loved them as a kid. Now I wonder

Why we don’t tremble today at thunder

Of beasts. New catastrophes loom, some think.

Will we live long enough to be extinct?

Philosophy, 1899 (Gustav Klimt), Sonnet #459

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That being and nothing and time

Are the three dimensions of mind,

Qualia same in sense, not kind,

Is more than a plausible rhyme.

All unquestionable questions

Have been asked, answers propounded,

By men who offer suggestions

As truth — and we are astounded!

But what takes me is the beauty

Of one idea (though not its words,

Elusive as murmuring birds),

A glimpse of my own purity.

Combined they’re an absurdity.

Nothing is found in surety.

Limits of Reason (Paul Klee), Sonnet #453

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Reason arrives in the shape of a ball,

(And, no, it won’t come rolling when you call).

The limits of reason are sun-dark red

When the dust (ladders and tethers) of thought

Becloud a light in what you thought you sought.

They say there’s no saying what can’t be said.

No perfect round ball exists in nature,

Though some suggest we can imagine one.

About either ball, how can they be sure?

My reasoning only misshapes reason.

With two hands I toss the sunlight awry.

I can blind my mirrored eyes with a blink.

But no one can answer the question “why?”

No matter how reasonably they think.

The Cave at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Utagawa Hiroshige), Sonnet #449

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A sacred wave chases men from the shore

A sacred tree survives the wind and wrack

A sacred root clutches a rocky crack

A sacred cave with silk smooth walls and floor 

This all exists because I stand outside,

My eye less a lens than a picture frame.

My mind shutters, cannot close, opens wide

Dying to give everything a name.

Three men venture slowly into the cave,

Carry one lamp they will light at the nave

Where the sea’s voice is echoic and grave

And the light is not particle or wave.

They bring nothing else, no prayer to say

In this mouth opened by ancient sea fray. 

Pikes Peak (Albert Bierstadt), Sonnet #427

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I lived on Custer, a white hood

Filling my living room window.

On a June afternoon I stood

On the summit in blooms of snow,

An hour later in sun below.

The peak was seldom where you were

And never where you were not sure

A great presence of white and pink,

As if by thinking, made you think.

The Utes called it “Tava” or sun,

As if there must be more than one,

Needing light close enough to touch,

To take away, but not too much,

Or soon the mountain would be gone.

La Cigale, “The Grasshopper” (Joseph Lefebvre), Sonnet #410

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Fear most the things you’ve left undone. 

While you were singing to the sun

You lost your tunic in the field. 

You kicked off your only sandals. 

Your food was stolen by vandals

And no one shares the harvest yield. 

All resent your beauty, your ways,

Ignoring what anyone says. 

And even though you’re innocent 

You behave with a fool’s intent. 

Some almost wish you’d tempt their lust

And justify your being crushed. 

They will look to your starvation 

As their much deserved salvation.

Note: This beautiful work refers to Aesop’s fable of ‘The Grasshopper and the Ant.’ Painted following the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war, it was considered an allegory of Napoleon III, who lead France to economic ruin. The painting depicts ‘The Grasshopper’ in autumn, realising the consequences of her careless frivolity.

Girl Chopping Onions (Gerrit Dou), Sonnet #350

Moribund metaphors abound -- the slow reveal
Of the nested skin layers of the onion peel,
The dead hen who'll never precede another egg,
The beer mug emptied into some drunk's hollow leg.
My dear girl, with your empty grin and eyes dark ice,
Pardon. I've no objection as you dice and dice,
As you cut to the cool white heart of the matter,
Through insinuations and insincere chatter.
The chicken and the onions will make a fine pie,
And I, at least, will be the last to wonder why.
Beware the princeling who begs you to come play ball.
His ignorance of your state might cause your downfall.
I wish you all the grace of love in future years.
Bless you for working so hard, so hard without tears. 

Morning News (Francis Luis Mora), Sonnet #303

The Times is meant to be crumpled in tight places,
Smudged, barely dry print, the yesterdays of faces.
What's done is done when read and forgotten,
And not until. A caveman looms, leers, teeth rotten,
One eye white, as if turned around in its socket,
The other reading about the latest rocket
Planned to reach the nearest star in a century.
He doesn't stir the slightest curiosity
In young women who can't smell him through their perfume.
The scent of ink is stronger. The stink of the tomb
Draws the caveman back into the metro pages,
Which he'll contemplate as his winey blood ages.
The bus slowly empties of papers and people.
A fallen Times lays gutters up like a steeple.

Note: Among other things, "gutter" is the word for the white
space in a newspaper between the print on the left side
and the print on the right side of the crease.

The Fall of Icarus (Picasso), Sonnet #302

The sun is father to the father and the son.
Maze-minded Daedalus almost invented Earth;
If it was (and it had to be) born, his reason
Rolled it into a ball of life and roaring mirth.
He knew what was needed, met the exigencies
Of power over nature and control of fate,
The harnessing of the mind and how it foresees,
The imprisoning of evil, the murder of hate.
He must have been a loving father, or a fool,
To fashion wings for his son as well as himself.
We know, he warned the boy, that they were just a tool
To scratch the sky, not calipers to span the gulf
Between dirt and light. The heedless boy died too soon,
To his earth-glad father a stripped and distant moon.

Galaxy PGC 6240 (Hubble Telescope), Sonnet #270

One doesn't believe in the galaxies
Because they cannot speak. They ran away
And left us with nothing but dimming seas
Of light (not much of that), the random ray
Of heat, glow of illuminated gas,
And the supernova's vestigial mass.
Cataclysm: stars collide in silence
To the humiliation of science.
Lying awake, I go there every night --
A Lagrange point between planet and sun,
Steadfast along their centrifugal bight,
Worlds parsecs away, not unlike this one.
Things move in space but what does space move in?
What probe scratches the universe's skin?

Autumn Landscape at Dusk (Van Gogh), Sonnet #267

The trilling of the screech owl and the wind
In the leaves call to each other in words
Only the words themselves will comprehend.
I walk and answer with an empty mind,
Which slowly fills with the blinking of birds
And muted colors breezes twist and bend.
It's taken the sun's near infinite power
To tinge the air with diminishing light,
Like a mind telescoped to mere eyesight
Or eternity lasting just one hour.
I have found the owl in his empty knot --
Feathers indistinguishable from bark.
For a second nothing will thrive or rot
As the owl closes one eye to the dark.