Ascending and Descending (Escher), Sonnet #231

I grew up in the old stone house of sleep.
I'd sit on the top step of the entrance
And dream mazes of stair, of room, and floor,
My youth's slumber oblivious and deep.
Growing older, seeking a deeper trance,
I entered the house through the basement door
Where myriad doorless, high ceilinged rooms,
All windowless, lead me onto the roof,
My mind alight like pyrotechnic blooms.
There 25 me's, robotic, aloof,
Marched up and down and up maniac stairs,
Marched pair by pair by pair by pair by pair,
Never, never arriving anywhere,
Unblinking, blind with insomniac stares.

The Shell (Odilon Redon), Sonnet #230

Found empty on beaches, a snail's life's completion,
(But for the occasional hermit crab squatting),
The record of years of unconscious secretion,
Like an old oak tree's sawed rings, without rotting.
The exterior is rough and pointed, lining
As smooth as fired glaze, lucent, roseate, shining.
Pick one up and look deeper inside than you can.
All forgotten dreams fit snugly in living shell.
Ear-worms of time sing from the conch's well
And whisper secrets of the universe's plan.
(It's only the echo of the blood in your brain,
They say, or the pounding of the bounding main.)
The conch is -- we can reach inside, attempt to seize
Its mind. We can also try to swallow the seas.

War (Rousseau), Sonnet #229

Nations fight War because they have no choice.
Men silence with bomb, rifle, and the sword,
Trying to bury Death's insistent voice
(Though a command is just War's godlike word).
By killing each other men will kill War,
At least that's what they're told by king and czar,
Emperor, minister, and president.
A doctor, my dad had to shoot a man,
A "Jap" who burst into his patients' tent.
War keened, "First, do harm!" as the man's blood ran.
We are all divided into two camps,
Those who fight a war and those who do not.
War offers the latter up to his champs,
Then rallies them all toward riot and rot.

Along Schnebly Hill Road, Sedona (D'Arcy Guerin Gue), Sonnet #227

Sometimes beauty is the eye of the beholder.
My sister took this photo in January.
(We're two of seven and she's seven years older.)
It is what she sees, so it means something to me.
As a small boy I was crippled and wore a brace,
Thirteen pounds of leather, rubber, laces, and steel.
It fell to her to help me put it on -- she'd kneel
And manipulate the thing with patience and grace.
It seemed there were always problems; sometimes the parts
Wouldn't mesh, or no longer fit me, or leather
Pinched muscles or skin. We'd work at it together,
And the pain of it for us wrung my sister's heart.
I see in this sunset her soul, joyful, clear-eyed,
And as compassionate as this warm sky is wide.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Moon Sonnets, Sonnets #225 and #226

Gibbous Moon at Sunrise, Sonnet #226

Change speeds. No scales, no balances remain even;
They tip, totter, weighing innumerable me's.
A morning so cold I wonder if pupils freeze.
The waning moon runs from the invisible sun.
A bare tree passes on its light from limb to limb,
Chipping away the orb's disintegrating rim.
I stop to take this picture (though I'm late for work)
Of a moment when, through clutter of trees and murk,
The exhausted, retiring moon beckons and winks,
Before, like reversed syntax, into earth it sinks.
Two days later, at precisely the same hour,
I returned -- the sky empty, the air ancient cold.
You must, I thought, do everything in your power
To stop the need to see clearly from growing old.

Fall Night (David Mikautadze), Sonnet #225

The moon says to the maple tree,
"You owe your existence to me."
Silent, the tree decides to be.
(Its leaves ruffle the wind's smooth voice.)
The moon and tree suggest a choice.
I can wish or I can rejoice.
I can happily know the night
Or yearn for knowledge of the light.
Do pages of a closed book read
Each other? Do dimensions bleed,
With time becoming space at times?
The moon and the maple tree rhyme.
Because I am given the chance,
I choose joy, even ignorance.

Click on the images to see larger versions.

The Yellow Sail (Odilon Redon), Sonnet #224

The passage of the soul -- a mess of gold,

No longer treasure or currency,
Plus cut and uncut baubles, glistening
Or dull, stored away in a sailboat's hold --
Is the crossing of a perilous sea.
Two spirits, one seeing, one listening,
Neither speaking, steer the shallow craft past
Receding shore until it's gone at last.
A stiff, cold wind fills the tall yellow sail.
The blood red bow parts each threatening wave
To another dead sailor's muffled wail,
Begging to leave his expiatory grave.
With grace, the boat might reach the farther shore,
Or leave all to rot on the ocean floor.

Three Deadly Sonnets, #221, #222, #223

Train Trestle (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #223

People still talk about Tarzan* diving
Off the south end (the north much too shallow),
Swimming upriver to the public beach.
Few recall cars and engine arriving
On either side, or a whistle's bellow,
Yet nothing's diminished its iron reach.
I once saw a man killed near the trestle.
A speedboat hit a sunken pier and flew
Up, tossing the driver backward; the screw
Bit him as the boat came down. I wrestled
A pram into the water, but he swam
To the other shore screaming, where a man
Pulled him out; as he died, the speedboat ran
On in a spiral toward the city dam.

*Johnny Weissmuller

The Snake Charmer (Henri Rousseau), Sonnet #222

The cobra hid beneath the house as we returned from church.
My father pinned him with a stick as my sister came near.
The serpent reared and flared his hood. We saw him vainly lurch
At my sister, who only leaned closer, quite without fear.

The snake charmer fingers his flute, his breath
Enchanted, a simulacrum of death
The snakes approach from curiosity.
To strike the man would end the mystery,
And leave an eternal ear-worm, a tune
Like the moaning of the coming monsoon.

Dad dispatched it with a thrust, but not right away,
Instead conducting a lesson for his children.
As he spoke of the farms where they collect venom,
The cobra danced a diminishing bob and sway.

Duel Between Onegin and Lenski (Ilya Repin), Sonnet #221

Thus in a duel the man who’s in the wrong
(In honor, good shots can be weak or strong)
Might find himself puking, stagger away
From his challenger swearing and bleeding
Out his life, supine in a dewy field.
Those who later hear of the fight will say
Of the killer, “But he’s of good breeding,
And the dead man was a fool not to yield.
After all, winning is vindication!”
Onegin killed his friend Levski over
His own jealous, vindictive flirtation
With Olga, Levski’s inconstant lover.
For both men, “honor" was nothing to trust,
Just a word for anger, ego, and lust.

Swinging Bridge, Belvidere, IL (Bill Eklund), Sonnet #220

There's just this moment, this perfect moment.
The past is there for us, but almost nil,
A deep and half-lit cave we mine each night
For silver only we can melt or mint,
Or capture in a photographic print.
The future is not even something still,
But a river of invisible light,
Empty of anything the light might strike.
Today, the swinging bridge has a locked gate,
At the other end of the span, its mate.
Years past, I crossed it whenever I'd like.
At its bellied center I'd fish for pike,
Or throw my weight and make it slowly swing.
Without me here, I'd think, there is nothing.

The Siesta (Van Gogh), Sonnet #219

Most nights I wake up for an hour.
The scythes of sleep are out of reach
And there's nothing left of my dream.
That day past is a bright flower
In my head the darkness can't bleach
Or wilt, or dim its spectral beam.
I force myself to think of hay,
Of endless fields of solid gold
I must cut down by end of day.
If I just had two scythes to hold,
I'd swing away and never tire.
Each stroke would sharpen each blade,
The hay stack higher and higher,
Until I dream beneath its shade.

Triamphibiangle (David Birkey), Sonnet #218

The leopard, the tiger, and the lion frog
Have been the silent, devoted sentries
Of the last point-balanced triangle log
Longer than the countable centuries.
We might prefer to call the log a tree
As there is certainly a symmetry
To the branches, which do leaf out each spring;
Like faded memories, they quickly fall,
The last shudders of a nearly dead thing.
The frogs believe the balancing is all.
They live, first small, in the perilous gap
Beneath shorn bark that drips a mist of sap,
Then, grown, they form a protective cordon,
To wait and watch for any threat from men.

Click on the image to view a larger version.

The Scream (Munch), Sonnet #217

Let's clap our hands for Mr. Scream,
Who can't awaken from his dream,
Who can't tell things that are from seem.
He's lost his former self-esteem
And stops his ears from blowing steam.
Perhaps the consultative team
He works with has begun to scheme
To discredit, tarnish the beam
Of his reputation's buffed gleam.
Maybe a woman of extreme
Cruelty and beauty poured a stream
Of contempt on him like soured cream.
Who once in his world reigned supreme,
Has now become a risible meme.

Two Tales, Sonnets #215 and #216

Sleeping Beauty (Viktor Vasnetsov), Sonnet #216

For Irina Velitskaya

1
Even the family brown bear
Joined the princess in endless sleep
In the embrambled castle keep.
The prince found her pale, cold, but fair,
And released her, her retinue,
From endless dreams to nothing new.
A wedding and two babes conceived
Enraged the prince's ogress queen,
Who ordered them served up in sauce,
Though she was easily deceived,
With hind and lamb in a tureen,
By the cook, who hated his boss.
She died in a barrel of snakes.
Each day the sleeping beauty wakes.

2
We've all been asleep for 100 years,
So, when we wake, vigorously alive,
As the creeping armies of night arrive,
We will wash them out to sea with our fears.
The cannibals will have themselves to eat.
The king and queen will summon a piper
To drive away the thorn and the viper,
But hear only their own hearts cease to beat.
What we will make of our new universe
Depends (like the fine point of a spindle)
On how tiny, sharp our hearts will dwindle.
Will we invite a new, more evil curse?
Sleep on, nothing will happen while we do.
The prince's kiss has changed into a moue.

Click on the image to see a larger version.






















Frontispiece from Visions of the Daughters of Albion (Blake), Sonnet #215

The rapist and his victim chained,
The lover, his anguish burning
Hottest where his tears had rained,
On pale cheeks, twisted lips: yearning
For her touch is all that remained.
The rape forged its own manacles,
The woman's shame and the man's fear,
(He finds, wherever he looks, a mirror).
She's no longer a miracle
Of virgin grace and purity.
The rapist is a stupid beast
She can neither hate nor pity.
The sun breaks through clouds to the east,
And melts the chains. The lovers kiss.
The third drowns himself with a hiss.

Ruth and Christopher Guerin (November 27, 1977), Sonnet #214

Still my love, of 41 years, still mine,
You are both a truth and beauty of time.
A blizzard, as this picture was taken,
Danced up the town, as if to awaken
With skeins and wild cascades of wind and white
A lazy prematurely sleeping night,
As you, in our marrying, ignited
A new soul in me, the old one blighted.
After we kissed and I stepped on the glass,
Our eyes met and said our own private mass.
The beauty in this picture speaks to me
Every day, with word, gesture, mystery
Unspoken, not unheard. I answer, so:
We still love. That is all we need to know.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Memory (The Heart) - Frida Kahlo, Sonnet #213

Every memory comes to us incomplete,
A comet disintegrating as it passes,
An empty sailboat washing ashore at our feet
(Or perhaps we've simply forgotten our glasses).
But say this memory is like her heart removed
And left to beat out its blood on the beach,
The scarred remnant of one once much beloved
She had gladly exchanged for her own, each for each.
Now she has become a memory with a hole
In her breast, pierced by an arrow, vaneless, headless,
Her arms in the sleeves of other women's dresses,
Her white skirt all that's left of her immortal soul.
A woman once replete now completely empty --
Forgotten blood runs to the mountains and the sea.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Equals Infinity (Klee), Sonnet #212

Nothing equals infinity,
And that, yes, and that, all that crap,
Just a damned ambiguity
And metaphysical trap.

Infinite the galaxies.
Infinite the grains of sand.
Infinite the gaseous seas.
Infinity we understand.

Nothing we can't contemplate,
Because nothing has no equal.
There's no infinity so great
Or timeless, nor a thing so small,

Except, my eye on a migrating bird
At the feeder, there, equally absurd.

Le Salut (Delvaux), Sonnet #211

1
The ball and pyramid finials rhyme
With the snow-topped volcano far away.
The streetcar has arrived almost on time.
Its one rider escapes into dark woods.
A gent tips his bowler, as if to say,
To his muse, "Thanks for a peek at the goods."
She raises her left hand to draw him near;
Does she desire to stroke or slap his cheek?
Great muses are naturally unclear
In their gestures. Is it art or love they seek?
In each window on the street a model
Poses for any artist to ogle,
But there's no one else but the gallant gent,
Whose inspiration is already spent.

2
I've walked this street for so many years.
Always the windows are unoccupied,
And where the robe-draped muse stood beckoning
To others, turning blind men into seers,
I find broken flagstones some mole has pried
From below, and a tired old man, yawning.
I've heard the volcano grumbling, hissing,
And from somewhere padding of unshod feet,
Seen the gent's bowler rolling down the street,
And asked myself, "Is it me that's missing?"
The streetcar is late. Now I understand!
I run and reach it as it comes to rest.
The rider, a child, offers me her hand
And leads me away, into the forest.

Ghost (Kawanabe Kyosai), Sonnet #210

Ghosts are the necessary dead.
Without them we'd take for granted
The world we ourselves have haunted.
Not all must chew the hairy head
Of a witch or maculate bone
Of a disenchanted loved one.
Some lie sleeping, tossing, mumbling
At moonlight flooding the bedroom.
Or whisper in our sleep humbling
Past actions that no longer loom
In memory, since they've taken
Their shape before we awaken.
They walk with us during the day as well,
Kiss our lips, take our hands, guide us to Hell.