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.

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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.

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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.