The Moth (Balthus)

#152

A woman had a vision of a butterfly
Or was it a moth? Neither belonged in her mind,
Or so she thought. She reached out to touch it,
But the baby inside her begged her not to try.
It hovered near the oil lamp, then around behind
Her, teasing her. She'd turn left, right, but it would flit
To stay unseen, then fly overhead, fluttering
Just above her eyes, turning back toward the light,
Which responded to its fleet wings by guttering.
She took a thread from her towel and flung it right
Across its thorax, caught the other end and made
A knot -- dandled it on its leash. It flew until
She pulled too hard -- the moth began to fade
Until the world it left behind grew still.

TESSELLATIONS (Sonnets 150 and 151)

#151

Mosaic II (Escher)

The mosaic of time isn't patterned moments.
The snail, men, and the flounder share the sand,
Fitted together like ten lovers holding hands.
Camel neck, elephant trunk -- each is bent
To fit into interstices, the empty space
The other leaves so that each with each may embrace.
The lobster pinches the mule's ears and tongue.
The walrus tusk teases the rooster's comb.
A winged demon harries the frightened young
Chased by a sea serpent and silent guitar drone.
At the center the naked young god intones
That all is illusion, all is now, all is ones.
But the tortoise will never catch the hare with wings;
Time isn't duration, but living things.

#150

Aunt Vidalia's Living Room (Alice Guerin)

Aunt Vidalia has an onion for a face,
Lives only in her niece's imagination.
Her living room is a madly beautiful place,
Where family history, all tessellation,
Stares (or not) from portraits and drawings without frames --
Ancestors, animals, some with forgotten names,
Attest to the attenuation of the race.
Unsmiling Utrum never made a decision.
His brother Achilles wore jammies till he died.
Great Grannie Grout's mink was her only possession.
Son Ozimand's tin suit was handsome, though he fried.
Large sisters Dawn and Faun loved to pose in the nude.
(Not sure about the rooster; ready to be stewed?)
Vidalia's niece still adds to the family tree.
Will she ever include herself? We'll have to see.

TWO ROOMS (Sonnets #148 and #149)

#149

The Red Studio (Matisse)

A dream room or a memory box? Possibly.
Or the way the mind might order its better names.
The pulsing heart, collected idees fixes of me,
Clutters its floor and walls with furniture and frames.
A room for work, the usual imagery --
Nudes, a clock, flowers, a wineglass and chair --
Abounds, transformed into the exotic and rare.
A genie's black bottle spouts dancing blue roses.
Each painted, sketched or sculpted nude poses
A challenge to what real nudity exposes.
In the studio all things are outlined in white
Or pink. A red table or urn casts no shadow,
As though blood has burned away wasted sight,
And left only essence, a fixed and edgeless glow.













#148

Plum Tree (Kanō Sanraku)

His parents arguing in the bedroom,
Though no words are clear, their hatred
Is the coldest voice any child can hear.
Against his father's potent boom,
He erects four sliding doors from his dread,
Imagining plum trees with faded, sere
Blossoms. He prays for them to go to bed.

Years later he paints the doors in flaked gold --
The tree bearing sparse, meager blooms;
Its shattered trunk many hundred years old --
And installs them in his bridal bedroom,
Facing in; then he adds a mockingbird
On the last, least limb, to remind the groom
He must never repeat what he once heard.

Snow Falling on a Town (Utagawa Kuniyoshi), Sonnet #147

The painter says it's snow but I see comet tails,
Stars, and nebulae spin above the snowbound town.
It's all one element. Each flake of crystal hails
Down with blinding insistent force, without a sound,
Unconscious and mute emissaries of deep space.
Each man, woman and child must, for a little while,
Look up, forget their memories and fears, and smile.
Is there a better metaphor than snow for grace?
The town was built in a near treeless mountain's lee
In a valley where the shallow river freezes early,
So melting the snow for water to drink each day
Is a man's burden, deadly to ignore.
Though no one prays to the sky gods for more,
The world would end if snow just went away.

Sky Above Clouds IV (O'Keefe), Sonnet #146

I'd like to live in the clouds but it's forbidden.
I've walked blindly among them on mountains,
In Baguio, through rubble on Pikes Peak,
But it's not the same. Nothing stays hidden
For long before wind or sun raises the curtain;
The obscured becomes merely bleak.

O'Keefe's static pills of vapor
Might each contain a living soul or more,
Defying gravity, immovable by wind,
A purity of being replacing the mind.

No, I will float or fly with my brothers,
Learn their gentle ways and quiet tongue,
Escape the evil a pure cloud smothers.
I'll beg but they won't let me stay for long.

The Ultra-Deep Field (Hubble Telescope)

#145

1

A near infinity away a rock
Lies on the surface of a silent moon.

No one will ever touch it, but it's there.
An asteroid will slam nearby -- the shock
Will leave only the granules of a dune,
Cooling in the faintest stellar glare.

They pointed the Hubble at a starless
Hole near Orion and found galaxies
Where they thought to uncover emptiness.
They're nothing you or I will ever see.

I think at night of that rock and its kind,
Far more numerous than beams of starlight.
I'm their thoughts, unbounded, seeking to find
A life amidst the interstellar blight.

2

And if I could go to the universe's edge
(Even infinity, of course, has its limit),
Would I attain unimaginable knowledge,
Or discover that redundancy is infinite?

Why are there so damn many useless things out there?
A star can die, but none of us will weep.
Asteroids could kill millions any time or where.
Even the Big Bang didn't make a peep.

Like us, starlight is invisible until it
Illuminates an object with its energy.
We have a thought and something happens on the earth.
When I pass on will the universe still be lit?

I don't presume that everything will cease to be,
But more than me came into being with my birth.

Eternity and Wisdom (Arnold Houbraken)

#144

Who's the mad one? Her majesty Eternity,
Or Wisdom explicating the Ouroboros,
Pointing out how the serpent's self-consummation
Creates all perpetual circularity?
She finds his blather utterly monotonous,
His Latin-wrapped cane a young man's affectation,
And laughs at how he won't look at her breasts.
He's blind, of course, which she always forgets.
She's mad as math describing forever,
And can't pronounce the words "stop" or "never."
With her hand on the planetary sphere,
Warmed by a brazier of exploding stars,
She writes in her diary, "I'm not here.
I go on, on and on, though not that far!"