The Truth Coming Out of the Well (Jean-Léon Gérôme), Sonnet #543

 

Both the truth and its liars are hidden

And will not come forth to speak unbidden

By necessity’s will or convenience,

Unless called for by fakery of sense.

Only at the bottom of a dry well —

Half way, the easy half, from here to Hell —

Where nakedness — dear Truth — shivers and sighs,

Does Emptiness stitch gorgeous clothes of lies.

He emerges to strut in his glory.

Every sentence he spouts is a story.

His opposite, her body cleansed at least,

Climbs out to the reception of a beast.

They beat and rape her, drag her by her hair,

Throw her back into the well, her dark lair.

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Hope (George Frederic Watts), Sonnet #542

 

The single string of her burst harp

Can play a quavering C-sharp.

She embraces the instrument

Like a lover singing laments,

But hearing no responding tone.

Hope is always on her own.

One star and Jupiter, her chair,

Revolve in incandescent air.

She’s worn a tightly-wound blindfold

Since she was only two years old.

And she must seek a life in this

Emptiness and paralysis?

Yes. That is what hope signifies.

Creation of a song from sighs.

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

Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche and Thunderstorm (J.M.W. Turner), Sonnet #541

 

An avalanche exists in the abstract,

A violent snow and ice cataract,

Content without shape, without content,

A proliferation of the absent.

A blizzard wipes the air empty and white

And confuses real things with closed-eye night.

(Formlessness is a natural order,

An extremity without a border.)

The thunderstorm exposes the mountain

With splintering intensity; fountains

Of light define the crag, the slope, the tree —

Revealing only momentarily.

These words (also abstract) erase all forms

From the blankest page — revealing more storms.

With thanks to Jeff Strayer for the Turner suggestion.

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

Wedding (Marc Chagall), Sonnet #540

 

For Ruth

We couldn’t foretell the future.

Who can? But with hope, trust, desire

On the wedding day, we made pure,

Our breasts pressed, blanketing with fire.

Outside a blizzard blocked the streets

And dazzled the windows light white.

Later, later, we heard the night,

Unafraid, as we stretched smooth sheets.

Forty-three years and nothing’s changed —

Not between us, not you, not me.

Newness, like children, we arranged.

We held them, then we set them free.

My love, I hold you in my arms,

Our kisses silence all alarms.

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

My Human Disguise.

Casting (Winslow Homer), Sonnet #539

 

When I cast the world disappears —

The rod, the reel, the line, the fly,

And the river cease to exist.

Even disappearance clears,

Leaving only motion. I try

To reach beyond the blazing mist.

The trout are only a waiting,

Still beneath endless cataracts,

Oblivious of my baiting.

Sand and pebbles stipple their backs.

When I leave with an empty creel,

I’m empty too, my wrist is sore.

Though I again begin to feel,

There is nothing lost to restore.

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

The Sheltered Path (Claude Monet), Sonnet #538

The old man plods toward senescence

On the sheltered path of his thought.

He thinks only what he can sense,

Senses only what he's been taught.

The trees on the path were planted

Decades ago as a windbreak.

Their trunks have been slightly canted

By dumb and insistent breezes.

Always more asleep than awake,

He follows that path, coughs, wheezes,

And nothing much occurs to him

He hasn’t sensed a thousand times.

Revelation would be a whim

Of these trees, these rustling chimes.

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

My Human Disguise.

 

Carpet of Memory 2 (Paul Klee), Sonnet #537

“Flying carpet” might be more apt,

Fleeing, unreachable, rapt.

Not magical, but uncanny,

Not even real, epiphany

Without a point because it is

Not up to analysis.

We’re given only a number —

How many can’t be counted, known —

(Fraying threads, fabric unsewn).

“I’m certain that I remember,”

I say. The carpet flaps. I fall.

Can I recall one thing at all?

The memories that I most fear

Are those I hope to lose next year.

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