Time Transfixed (Magritte)

#54

It is seventeen minutes to one.
The candlesticks are all empty
As they've been for all eternity,
Because of a window and a sun.
The mirror reflects the back of things
We see first hand. There is no second.
The train appears as though beckoned,
Flies on smoke and shadow wings.
No fire has ever burned in the fireplace,
No sign of ash, no sooty smudges.
Only the mind fixing this room budges,
Urging us deeper into interior space.
Look away, it's twelve forty-four.
The minute lost is yours no more.

Evening Landscape With Rising Moon (Van Gogh)

#53

Some painters depict. Some painters see.
It is unclear if Van Gogh even wanted us
To view his world of vibrating color
Moving faster than light, his string theory.
Each brushstroke is abstract, fibrous,
A strict, short thread, a measure
As fixed as E in a cosmic equation.
Unclear, because we sense a desperation,
A mania to eject onto space within a frame
A vision too intense for his soul to contain
(Not the insular effusion of the insane).
The painting contains things we can name:
Moon, hills, clouds, sky, hay,
But nothing we can see any other way.

Primavera (Botticelli)

#52

It's Spring and Goddesses are with child:
Queen, handmaidens, sisters, all,
Though one may have been defiled.
Not by Cupid, who gets away with Murder,
His arrows inflicting Lover's Pall.
Nor young Mercury with his caduceus
Resisting threats to the Natural Order.
No, suspicion falls on Zephyrus,
Whose puffed cheeks and pallor
Terrify Flora and draw a flower
From her mouth, in mockery of birth.
Venus looks upon us, the Human Races,
With envy, ignored by oblivious Graces.
Primavera drops dry petals to the Earth.

The Concert Singer (Eakins)

#51
For Renee Fleming

Some singers are made of music,
As though there exists a music gene.
For some, even great artists, it's a trick,
The benefit of exquisite training.
You feel the absence of a votive force.
The notes, even the shaping of line,
Are pleasing, like a poem's off-rhyme,
But talent, not music, is their source.
Some singers make of breath a force
That governs the fluidity of time.
The best understand that beauty is fleeting,
That this song, now, is their only chance,
That perfection knows no repeating,
And thrust at our hearts like a lance.

The Sleeping Venus (Delvaux)

#50

Sleeping Venus does not dream of men.
She is made of love she cannot share,
Love being just another form of flesh
Only memory can touch again and again.
Like the sickle moon, vicious and fair,
She is unimaginably distant light and ash.
Her five handmaidens gyrate and moan,
Beseech the night for clothes of their own.
The well-dressed Madame, Venus' tool,
Mistakes a skeleton for a love-struck fool.
Bleak and meager dreams for a goddess,
Yet how peacefully she seems to sleep.
Though her realm is all stone and distress,
We will now invade her sacred keep.

Wheat Field With Crows (Van Gogh)

#49

Have you studied the flight of crows?
They are always agitated, urgent.
Vultures teeter like drunken sots,
Cranes' wings beat insistent blows,
And hawks float lazily fluent --
Crows flap like worried thoughts.
Last week, I saw a hundred rise
From a wheat field recently mown.
They wheeled and as one dropped down,
As though they no longer feared my eyes.
The painter saw them rise and flee
Beyond a path through the wheat,
Into darkening skies, where he couldn't see.
He painted going forward and retreat.

Cafe Terrace at Night (Van Gogh)

#48
For Ruth

Is there just one universe?
There the stars and here the cafe.
Hidden lights illuminate the tables.
The various darknesses immerse
Men and stars in dissolving clay.
Are both god and science fables?
The universes are infinite,
They say, and time does not exist.
But here we are and there the stars.
The air is full of perfume and wit,
And a wine too ancient to resist.
All else is beyond, late and far.
Let's nibble galaxies and swallow suns.
I'll count my hours with you by ones.