Starry Night (Van Gogh)

#36

The Milky Way is a maelstrom of light
Where silence is the only stillness.
The cypress tree can only reach
At what cannot be bound by flight,
Distance being a kind of illness
Of idea, each too far from each.
Daily, I hurl at them a thought,
Even at those so great they would
Encompass Mars from our sun's core.
Wonder cannot be overwrought.
Van Gogh sees them as a flood
Oblivious of us on our lonely shore.
Mountains, trees, and houses are all
We may have, until the stars fall.

Catching a Catfish with a Gourd (Josetsu)

#35

The gourd is the dry brother to the fish.
The curvature of spout and spine
Rhyme with the barrier of the riverbank.
Hard fiber, dark clay, and green flesh
Are his brain, befuddled by wine.
I must make my mind a perfect blank,
He thinks, if I'm to lure the catfish inside.
But the neck is only two inches wide!
That fat fellow is slick and fast as light,
While I would lose a race with mud.
But if I could do it, how sublime!
Clearly, there's no wrong way or right.
The answer pulses in his brain as blood,
Easy as catching an idea with rhyme.

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity (Redon)

#34

The sky, no matter how clear, isn't infinity.
Look up and bring down all that you know.
The eye isn't what allows the mind to see.
Faith is only what we guess from below.
In my dreams the balloon keeps going,
Beyond gravity, planets, the Oort Cloud,
Reaching motionlessness in space, owing
Nothing to speed or distance, allowed
A view, undimmed, of all of creation,
Its perfection, silent, replete, and empty.
There, at the center, is the universe's sun.
The eye, stared down by that blind sentry,
Can only blink and look the other way,
At my head, beneath, swinging on a tray.

Rose in a Tumbler (Mondrian), Sonnet #33

A powder blue flower,
Rose in a short glass,
A seer's whiskey sour,
Nature without surface.
A drawing to surpass
Reality, it grows,
It seems, to embarrass
Red and white roses.
We see the draftsman knows
A multiplying power
(A rose in blooming blows),
Imagination's flower --
All for the glass to think,
And for the eye to drink.

Angel In Mask (Mihail Chemiakin)

#32

Awe of God. Angel terror. The almost
Deadly birds of the soul. Fear
First confronts the heart's ghost
Staring into the prepotent mirror.
The flesh-and-bone-deformed soul
Eludes the quick eye, the pricked ear.
What did we expect: dilating hole
In our forehead, a tiny face—
Grunting, found-out star nose mole?
Only then, in panic, do we embrace:
Eyes closed, silent, still almost
Alone, we feel our warmth trace
The form of the heart and God--one host,
The last masker of his mild race.


Note: This print hangs above the fireplace in my living room, hence the slightly askew photo representation.

Jittoku Laughing at the Moon (Geiami)

#31

The night is without sound.
I slowly push my broom
This way, that, around.
The world is just a room,
Impossible to clean.
I lay my broom down.
Hands behind me, I lean
Toward the moon, frown.
I do not understand.
"Why do you grin?" I ask.
No answer. "Answer and
I'll return to my task!"
His silence thereafter
Silenced by my laughter.

Hui-k'o Cutting Off His Arm (Sesshu)

#30

Just idle anthropomorphizing,
To see a blind monster about to swallow
These two men, or empty philosophizing?
It's only a water-carved cave, after all.
The master stares holes in the cave wall,
As Hui-k'o offers up his severed limb
In angry frustration at being ignored.
A Zen tradition, the teacher's whim,
A simple gesture of emptiness restored
Through which a thousand monsters roar.
Bodhidharma does not blink an eye to see
The wall is both, suffering and ecstasy.
Nothing left for Hui-k'o to know or to teach,
Everything is now beyond his arm's reach.