Spring (Giuseppe Arcimboldo), Sonnet #454

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My Human Disguise.

The vernal air smells first of earth,

Healthy rot freed of snow and frost,

A renewal not without cost

In drowned worms and corruption’s worth.

But that’s when the wind and clouds still

Suppress urgency with a chill.

Even then magnolias bud,

Crocuses and snowdrops peek

Through the dirt, while a foggy scud

Carries off the unwholesome reek.

A day passes, the sunlight blooms,

Igniting our backyard bowers.

Trailing uncountable perfumes,

A lady’s dressed just in flowers.

Limits of Reason (Paul Klee), Sonnet #453

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My Human Disguise.

Reason arrives in the shape of a ball,

(And, no, it won’t come rolling when you call).

The limits of reason are sun-dark red

When the dust (ladders and tethers) of thought

Becloud a light in what you thought you sought.

They say there’s no saying what can’t be said.

No perfect round ball exists in nature,

Though some suggest we can imagine one.

About either ball, how can they be sure?

My reasoning only misshapes reason.

With two hands I toss the sunlight awry.

I can blind my mirrored eyes with a blink.

But no one can answer the question “why?”

No matter how reasonably they think.

Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 7, Adulthood (Hilma af Klint), Sonnet #452

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My Human Disguise.

Behind closed eyes, what’s written I redact —

Such is not just an idea but an act.

I don’t mean dreams, nor the imagined fact,

Like the nautilus, a chambered prison

Of the real, the unreal, and the abstract.

All I see is suspect and misprision.

Then bloom the perfect flowers of the now,

The dance of the ideal shapes, the entr’acte

Between times (those blind-eyed scenes of the show).

Now doesn’t admit even one and three,

Only two, which becomes nonentity

And leaves a shape we only think we see.

It’s all we know, not all we need to know.

Bird in Space (Constantin Brancusi), Sonnet #451

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My Human Disguise.

A bird in flight, unless it is diving,

Will spread and flash its wings in relentless

Thrust upon the air, a constant striving

For elevation, distance, a restless

Agitation driven by hunger’s need,

Expressed in unmindfully graceful speed.

Only a bird in space can fold its wings

As it rises and point up with its beak,

Not needing to look down to hunt, to seek.

And no bird in airless flight ever sings.

The artist could have named it Bird In Flight,

But that would have tethered it to the ground.

You say he has, here, with a marble mound.

Imagined, the bird disappears in sight.

Narcissus (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) Sonnet #450

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My Human Disguise.

I don’t call that man a nattering ass

Who says he created my looking glass

Since I opened his mouth to amuse me

With my own exquisite philosophy.

No one can say I didn’t make the world

That flaps like a flag some soldier unfurled.

I needn’t apologize that I willed

To have that soldier spared, wounded, or killed.

There’s no one to extend my regrets to,

Except my entirely imagined “you.”

I make, making sure I can’t change today.

“Prove it!” you demand, which I made you say.

There’s only my beautiful Narcissus

And can be only him and me, no “us.”

Note: I also write about this great painting
in Sonnet #351.

The Cave at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Utagawa Hiroshige), Sonnet #449

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My Human Disguise.

A sacred wave chases men from the shore

A sacred tree survives the wind and wrack

A sacred root clutches a rocky crack

A sacred cave with silk smooth walls and floor 

This all exists because I stand outside,

My eye less a lens than a picture frame.

My mind shutters, cannot close, opens wide

Dying to give everything a name.

Three men venture slowly into the cave,

Carry one lamp they will light at the nave

Where the sea’s voice is echoic and grave

And the light is not particle or wave.

They bring nothing else, no prayer to say

In this mouth opened by ancient sea fray. 

Contrast (Order and Chaos) (M.C. Escher), Sonnet # 448

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.













Which of these is the impossible object?

I think the bottle, pipe and flowerpot

Are too much victims of serene neglect.

The string isn’t tied with a proper knot.

The opened can and the crumpled up box

Are both containers that don’t come with locks.

Nothing is whole in itself — the heel plate,

The cork, or the sardines someone just ate.

Even the tool (I don’t know what it’s for)

Needs some receptive substances to score.

You think I’m ignoring the obvious,

A crystal globe that’s pierced with pyramids,

An object of reflections marring grids.

The only impossible things are us.