The Fall of the Rebel Angels (Bruegel), Sonnet #157

There's no reprieve. The angel falls out of its soul,
Becomes a creature of the earth, a splitting toad,
Blowfish, shark, naked soldier, or blind vole.
From eggs grow butterfly wings and white tails,
Reptilian, self-constricting. Calm angels goad
And herd them with blackened swords, spears, and flails,
Their wings edged with dried blood. A pustulant strumpet
Dances to the wailing of a thousand trumpets.
This is the great war of faith, so nothing must die.
One angel, still robed, tries, but can no longer fly.
Nearly blinded by the sun, it can't choose between
What it once believed in and what its eyes have seen,
And, crashing, becomes Belial, verminous beast.
His diseased tormenting of man has never ceased.

Trees in the Snow (Caspar David Friedrich)

#156

We cut down dead oaks to reopen the old mine,
One hundred years abandoned, a collapsed shaft,
And no promise the old diggers hadn't been good
At their work and found every nugget worth a dime.
My partner wasn't afraid of the dark and laughed
When I said, you go first beneath the earthen hood.
That was twenty years ago and old Caspar died
Before a single shovel was turned. "Christ!" he cried,
And, running from the shadows, impaled his right eye
On a six inch nail jutting from a rotting beam.
Having pulled him from the ruin, lantern held high,
I entered the darkness to see what he had seen.
There was a mirror there, neither real nor a dream.
I saw my self -- or at least myself if I'd been
A few hundred years old -- pluck out my eye and scream.

The Reach of Time (Julia Guerin)

#155

All the clocks drowned in the gutter of time,
In wax melted from a trillion tapers,
The hours from face to face no longer rhyme.
Lady Gone, her head done up in papers
(She turned blue when her capillaries froze),
Buffs the planets on her thigh with a rose.
Our red Lady of Soon, pregnant with love,
Runs and with her hand reaches above
The horizon to push the moon away,
And instead erases its ageless gray.
The sky behind leaks through. Her baby's birth
Will be ballyhooed with a lunar frown
And Gone will steal the infant for her own.
No matter. Soon is soon pregnant with Earth.

CONTEMPLATIONS (Sonnets #153 and #154)

 #154

Crystal Pyramid

A crystal pyramid, faceted creation
Of pressure, heat and imagination,
Frozen purity, a trap for light with five sides,
Where reflection upon infinity resides.
In total darkness it sleeps in oblivion,
But a single candle ignites a refraction,
Carving light into color in serrated planes,
Only as rigid as the stillness of the flame.
But a camera flash, like a blast of insight,
Will bury color at its heart and leave a blight
Of vacant lines as each facet locks to the next,
Like pages in a closed book obliterate text.
Let the sun burst it red, orange, yellow and blue,
Then open your eyes, take your time, and think things through.

#153

Two Men Contemplating the Moon (Caspar David Friedrich)

We can see the moon, but not its eclipse.
We drink the coldest stars with little sips;
Venus, a tear on the horizon's cheek;
Mars bleeds; the Dipper, wan and weak,
Contains an empty trapezoid.
The Milky Way flows nowhere from the void.
This night, we want nothing to learn.
Our regrets leak from a cracked urn
Of lust and yearning we fling at the stars.
Shattered, it forms constellations of scars.
The lunar eclipse, the earth's one moment
Of triumph over the universe's intent --
We grow no brighter by dimming the sun.
We leave chastened. There's so much to be done.

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.