Friedrich Nietzsche (Edvard Munch), Sonnet #446

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My Human Disguise.

He stands as if on the opposite rail —

On the same old circumambient bridge —

From the man with two strangers on his trail.

His forehead is a rain-carved granite ridge.

Though he seems composed, thoughtful, hands steady,

He might be going insane already.

The other’s panicked cry doesn’t make noise,

While Fritz shadows his pain in equipoise.

They say his sly sister Elizabeth

Let his mustache grow to cover his teeth

And tongue that in a mock rictus of death

Would twist and grind, never ceasing to seethe.

He called himself a nitroglycerine

Antidote for no god, if not for sin.

Pine Tree (Giovanni Segantini), Sonnet #445

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My Human Disguise.

Now is not a moment in time,

But all of time in a moment.

Ice hangs off ledges in the creek,

Which passes through the still sublime.

The trunk of the pine tree is bent

And leans toward the water to seek....

The tree splits at the lower bole

And higher up its halves are whole.

Its lower needles graze pink blooms;

Above the forest canopy

They brush the sky like tiny brooms.

What we cannot see they can’t be.

This now is ever-present change

Not even time can rearrange.

Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais and The Tree of Tule, Sonnet #444

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My Human Disguise.

Say that not all works of beauty are willed.

For centuries freemasons tried to build

A spire 500 feet into the sky,

Which collapsed three times and was abandoned.

They settled for the real, but had to try —

Just one of the lessons it taught Rodin.

The Tule tree has the same architecture —

Chthonian, with buttresses, gargoyles,

All the result of a wild conjecture

And intent and the fruit of endless toils.

In truth, there’s nothing that’s not beautiful,

Nothing not made; even nothing is willed.

Everything is essence, blind, dutiful,

Perfect if at times imperfectly skilled.

The Thinker (Auguste Rodin), Sonnet #443

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My Human Disguise.

A problem with the “hard problem” —

How can this muscle mass and bone

Topped off with a refulgent shell,

Medulla and a tapered stem,

Obliterate being alone?

Thought isn’t thought in a locked cell.

Until we see eyes see, tongues talk,

Our eyes and tongues are chunks of chalk.

Rodin meant us to see an act.

His Thinker is an angel fact,

A nothing without us to see, 

Though it’s hard for us to believe.

No, it’s we think, we are — we weave

Each thought from you and you and me.

Alpine Landscape (Giovanni Segantini), Sonnet #442

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My Human Disguise.

He’d seen these mountains in many places,

In dreams through the eyes of countless faces,

In gilded frames stacked in storefront windows —

Oils, inks, pastels, pencils, grainy photos —

Each some dauber’s idea of a mountain,

Gravel dredged from a glorious fountain.

He’d climbed many times to the timberline

Before he’d drawn his first sketches — no sign

Of life must mar the purity of quartz,

Schist, granite, feldspar, molded by ages

Of the elements’ incessant rages.

Intentionally, his paintbrush distorts

What is seen, reducing it to hatches,

Creating mountains from tiny scratches.

Deep Universe, Sonnet #441

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My Human Disguise.

For Michael Antman

How can something be older by virtue

Of simply being farther away than . . . .

And there the most unlikely shrouds the true,

Which is quite the same as what is human.

A woman doing dishes sees a star.

Steam rises and the boy is in his bed.

A small second star shines sooner by far,

She thinks — the night sky is a tangled thread.

She thinks — begin, starlight, to bless this home.

You’ve had long enough to see me see you

From infinite sparks in your eternal dome.

All must live. All. Must. Live. The old and new.

She rinses and dries her hands with a towel.

Lights off, the stars wince at her avowal.

Winter (Giuseppe Arcimboldo), Sonnet #440

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My Human Disguise.

I am old and my blood won’t thaw.

I am the end. My lips are mold.

As if I execute some law,

I imprison all with the cold,

The icy and the bitter winds,

Punish spring’s, fall’s, and summer’s sins.

My eyes, nose and cheeks rot and cake.

A few green leaves cling to me still —

My young branches refuse to die.

It’s time to summon the first flake —

My sole star only time can kill —

And then to open up the sky.

When all is buried I will sleep

A tearless world that will not weep.