Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) (Van Gogh), Sonnet #532

 

Without it we can’t live in the moment.

Without its slowly grown paler shadows,

Without its insistence, its distractions,

Without its being what no one else knows,

Now would be indecipherable scent,

Bodies statuary of fixed actions,

A path a path no walker ever crossed,

A mother’s love forever nascent,

Immediacy soon forever lost.

The dead past animates the dead present.

Old women walk among the dianthus

As a young gardener with shears deadheads.

All apply a modest calculus

Of then and now among the flowerbeds.

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My Human Disguise. 

Impossible Chairs (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #531

Possible chairs. Impossible chair.

Thought prints like graphite on white stone,

No less real than drawing on air.

(One is the only one unknown.)

The rocker can’t stop and will fall.

Not every three-legged stool stands.

The bentwood arm chair has no front.

The best words, written with an awl,

Are those that no-one understands,

Like this, an impossible stunt.

Don’t tell me these chairs are not real.

You might as well say pairs won’t peel,

That a compass can square the wheel,

Or that what is dead is ideal.

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My Human Disguise.

Svetlana Reflects Herself in the Mirror (Karl Briullov), Sonnet #530

She sees. She sees. What does she see?

Searching, sad eyes? Defeated eyes?

I think she sees herself thinking.

It doesn’t have a property

Under lashes of dumb or wise.

It’s not a nothing nor a thing.

Two strings of pearls, two lines of thought

Only move when she concentrates,

Seeking for what cannot be sought,

What her mind only generates.

Before her reflection, her face

Is as thin as her bodice lace.

She turns away with no answer,

Twirls her body like a dancer.

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

My Human Disguise.

The Monk by the Sea (Caspar David Friedrich), Sonnet #529

The rock shelf doesn’t hold the sea

In place, thought the monk, rather say,

Water will accept a boundary

Because that is the given way.

He has learned little all these years;

How to eat, walk, but not to think,

But in the vanquishing of fears —

Little stones thrown in the sea sink.

He fears most the fog’s unwinding,

Like cloth from a bolt, the blinding,

When the sun’s lost sight of his eyes.

Then there's no telling fog from self.

He’s moveless till the wind rises.

A step might send him off the shelf.

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My Human Disguise.

Lake Storm, Sonnet #528

On my birthday the storm rolls in

Off a roiling Lake Michigan.

Just out of the water my girls’

Hair stands on end from the static

Electricity; a cloud blurs.

An eagle flees on bursting air;

Its wingbeats seem prophetic

Of a sudden lightning bolt scare.

We’re in the house before the rain

And the thunder’s humbling pain.

The air is clear after an hour,

But such upset you don’t forget.

I’m a thunderstorm losing power,

Moving off for a clear sunset.

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My Human Disguise.

Colorful Meal (Paul Klee), Sonnet #527

Are there allegories of the artist

Worth harkening to? We hardly exist!

Paul Klee tried with his “Colorful Meal.”

The table’s set with manikin and cat,

Cognac and deviled egg and phones for chat.

There’s gruel in a bowl but it’s not real.

An umbrella dries and a flag can’t wave.

A table fork has one too many tines.

(I write these words with diminishing lines.)

After lunch there are leftovers to save,

But will sooner or later be thrown out.

The diners had nothing to talk about.

In the cluttered emptiness they persist

In creating, though they scarcely exist.

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My Human Disguise.

 

Tree Roots (Van Gogh), Sonnet #526

For years we thought Vincent Van Gogh’s

Last painting was “Wheatfield with Crows,”

With its dirt road lost among rows

Of autumn grain that wave and glow,

Crows flying wild, a beckoning

Toward dark skies and reckoning.

And now? These gnarled tree roots, exposed

By wind and rain, gripping the soil,

Image of the ageless, unposed,

Riotous like his mental moil.

His vision turned to the abstract,

The canvas stabbed with daubs or smears,

As though more paint would reveal fears

Clutched inside against his final act.

Note: For many years, Wheatfield with Crows

was considered his final painting. Recent

discoveries have indicated that Tree Roots

was in fact his last work. Though there are 

competing theories, the Van Gogh Museum 

in Amsterdam's official conclusion is that 

the painter committed suicide with a pistol

soon after completing Tree Roots.

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

My Human Disguise.