Container for Stars (Klee)

#75

We thought, when we were the heart of the universe,
The constellations accumulate the divine.
We chanted as we watched the gods slowly disperse,
Replaced by single stars and Albert Einstein.
A star can fall. There's too much of velocity,
Distance, and duration in our current science,
Because there's no such thing as specificity.
Even if we could fly a billion light years hence,
What we want to see would be just as far away.
We might find a planet where men would want to stay.
Life could be altered. The sky would remain the same,
New constellations we'd have to give new names.
The discovered universe is not what we sought.
The only container of the stars is a thought.

Interior of a Forest (Cezanne)

#74

The forest waits each time we go away

And knows itself again when we return.

Each branch on every tree has either died

Or grown new leaves or limbs, as if to stay

The same, above the ground grown wild with ferns,

Was once considered, but never once tried.

The pileated woodpecker's square holes

Have gone dark gray; his maniac laughter

Fades into the leaf rustle and only after

We leave returns to the silence we stole.

The river's deep and can be treacherous.

Its trout will not be caught, its otter trapped.

Its odd meanderings cannot be mapped.

The river forest waits, but not for us.

SEASCAPE AT SAINTES MARIES DE LA MER (VAN GOGH)

#73

The ocean is the solution of time
And for a billion years it has dissolved
Itself into itself, into hours so fine
Eternity is perfectly resolved.
The sea reflects a sky the sky can't be,
A version of a face we recognize,
Inverted, what a broken mirror sees,
A lovely woman without any eyes.
The sails of fishing craft traverse the sun
And leave some wind to calibrate the waves.
As men haul nets over the horizon,
The day dives slowly into its deep grave.
We stand and watch it all from sea-wracked beach,
A universe that's ours, beyond our reach.

Saint George Killing The Dragon (Bernat Martorell)

#72

Expect a grimace of mercy from a saint,
When he thrusts a spear into a dragon's jaw.
The beast won't easily die; he'll cringe and feint
(Unlike the knight, he knows only natural law,
Which teaches treachery and ruthlessness),
And try to take the horse down before the rider.
Both are images of murderous righteousness,
Doomed, the dying serpent and the future martyr,
With only a hammered and honed sliver of iron
Hovering between the dragon and the paragon.
The villagers offered the princess as a sacrifice.
To double his armor the wise knight prayed,
Or was it to erase the vision of her perfect face?
It isn't clear, who is slayer and who is slayed.

Still Life (Pieter Claesz)

#71

Claesz paints no still life that is not about remorse.
(A double negative, much like any single life.)
Life without movement? We've no other recourse
Than contemplation of arrangements of food and knife.
Dried figs and bread, spilt olives, discolored fruit,
The waste of bounty for the sake of observation:
Grasp and consume images that we can't intuit?
The pie spills out the remains of a life's desecration.
And I do not mean regret, for things undone or done.
That is sin enough, a false darkness that frames us.
(Some nuts remain uncracked and meaty. Try just one.)
No, it is our perfect crime, unknown and blameless.
It is without taste or texture, without color or smell,
Old and faint, a fading song, but alive, a living hell.

The Yerres, Effect of Rain (Caillebotte)

#70

The river accepts a drop of rain with a ring
Of vanishing consequence, time into time,
Like a memory, a dilution of old yearning.
The river accepts the reflection of trees
With lack of precision, like a slant rhyme,
Like a memory we see but cannot seize.
I know this river. I once stood in this rain.
It told me that insight is not a reflection,
But the tree itself, which can only be known
If we remember it and then see it again.
The river accepts the rain without question,
Like a hand shaking hands with a koan.
The river accepts the trees without seeing.
It's to us to see such beauty here and fleeting.

Dark Light (Matta)

#69

This desert's a blanket of earth's exhaustion,
Where all that remains of life is on the surface.
Each creature, like the sun, is a dying furnace,
Slowly fusing bone, sinew, muscle, intestine.
The old structures melt away into essence,
Bypassing decay, desiccation, and putrescence,
Stopping short of the irreducibility of sand.
New life emerges, sparked by a decaying sun,
Ectoplasmic shapes a god wouldn't understand,
Creatures without breath or senses or reason.
If all worlds are possible, billions like this exist,
Simply because you or I can always imagine it.
We think, therefore, perhaps, we should resist
Creating a world we would never wish to visit.