Know 2

We can’t tell anyone to know,

Don’t even know what knowing is,

Where it comes from, its genesis.

Things we know just come and go.

We can’t force anything to stay,

Especially anything we say.

Everything we know is “as though,”

A nothing become contingent,

Mindlessly intelligent.

There’s no bird smarter than a crow,

Or so it’s said by learned men,

Who can count from one to ten,

But find it hard to explain how

Crows never fly in a straight line.

As if seeking some strict design,

We fly from not wanting to know.

Madame X, A Dramatic Monologue (John Singer Sargent)

 

Filthy man! He calls himself Artist!
We pay him a fat lawyer's fee
for his talent at offending me.
Those black eyes see naked flesh
where others see slips or camisoles.
He grins privately, licks his mustache,
strikes me in profile when my nose
is my least attractive feature,
and poses my bust straight ahead.
He's painting my blush, isn't he,
to set the whole world gossiping,
when I wouldn't let him touch me
with his brush! My husband hired
him, as usual, without a resume
or interview. I asked if he'd seen
a sample. "One, my dear," he said,
"which approximates our nephew's head."
My revenge had been this gown,
as expensive as it is décolleté,
and I suppose I dreamed a painter
to be schooled in professional behavior,
like my hairdresser and physicians,
to be marble-cool near bare shoulders-
but those eyes are blind to elegance
and see in sophistication only sex.
He flickers like black flame licking
the canvas with daubs of paint to show
that he's so serious in his art;
a wink and he'd be at me like a shark.
My neck! This portrait is overdue.
Aren't voyeurs prone to exhaustion too?
God would have had to think again
had he spent not seven days, but ten.
And when it's done, what will he have
made of me? Will I look exactly
as I am, well or badly drawn, my
beauty replaced by oily paint
or psychologically portrayed-
the face of hunger or deceit?
Will he trap each hair and mole, each
blemish like weird species in a zoo?
I'd be happier looming through a screen,
through a window dripping in the rain.
I should listen to my little sister
and have it done quickly by photographer.
Yes? Fine. So. He says it's finished
and invites me to look. A threat.
Let's see if it has been worth it.
My word! I'm so . . . do I seem so
to him? Yes, he's made a mistake
with my bosom, but my chin-
I hadn't thought the line that clean.
He teaches me to appreciate my nose.
My hair glows, darkness with a sheen.
My skin, alabaster everywhere, except
my ears, which do, I know, go red at
the least distress; my lips never
spoke such thoughts in mirrors; a kiss
from them I'd be wanton to bestow.
He's cut a heart out of my dress;
from waist to breast, the black cloth
flares and makes my shape a gift
to the admirer, while much else is left
undraped. Certainly the neck 
is false, too long, too muscular.
Perhaps it's all the pose he gave me.
My husband will conclude he raped me.
I was wrong and I will tell him.
Oh, he's gone! I didn't see him go!

La Patience (Balthus)

 

The drawn curtain and striped wallpaper
are an improbable contrast of commonplaces
while curtain and skirt converse
in the same green fabric
with black and rhyming folds
in a room where the Persian carpet
lies at the same skewed angle as the curtain
and seems to have white socks
when others are present
and thick books lie atop the wastebasket
where they belong
beneath a fancy copper box
hurriedly but not recently inspected
and an unlit taper and skinny deco pillow
point one at the bars of the wallpaper
and the pinned-up curtain
and the other at the girl's smooth sweater
which is orange also
and the closest thing to us
that player of patience
bent entirely too far forward
to be thinking about the game
and not herself as well
which is what patience is all about
in such a room.

Woman and Wind (Michael Antman), Sonnet #611

 

Eve listened to her heart and sinned,

Then passed out of paradise

Into paradise, clothed in wind,

Her mind unclouded as her eyes.

She found her husband hiding

Behind trees — he found her blinding.

They found each other in their arms

And recited a litany of charms.

They knew this world was not broken

And stood awaiting the awoken

Moment of their forgiveness.

Distant laughter beckoned them on.

As they walked beneath the midday sun,

The wind billowed her white silk dress.

Know 1

Some think trees know each other

As an unborn child knows its mother,

A receptivity to stasis and change,

Which continually rearrange

The molecules of a kind of mind

As they perpetually unwind.

“Some think” has become all

That’s left of the old universal.

I-70

 I wrote this about my trip from Colorado Spring to Fort Wayne in 1985. It seems an apt metaphor today for turning 70.

I-70

Chasing Kansas twisters, I interrupt

The moon floating above a thunderhead,

God pondering his coffee cup.

The locust lullaby in the trees

Is a song to stars, or to the dead:

Fireflies flash where I cannot see.

Above the hood, the shuffling storm

Is a man on his knees, fist shaking,

Roaring for his shattered arm.

Behind, the sky is empty and clear.

The earth recedes quickly, quivering:

Ground heat cracks the icy air.

Path (Michael Antman), Sonnet #610

 

The path into these woods begins

With tentative steps on bent grass

Widening for two to walk abreast.

The locomotives’ blaring tocsins

Grow infrequent as the years pass.

Few paths reach a place unaddressed,

Though many have been abandoned.

(Van Gogh’s led into wheat fields

Where all men’s souls are pardoned

With the harvest’s generous yields.)

It’s hard to walk on railroad ties,

The first too close, the second too far.

I walk into woods, perhaps in error,

On a path that offers no alibis.