Four Riffs on "Three Musicians" (Picasso)

#87

A tune is the ultimate abstraction,
An emotion expressed as a fraction.
Some notes invariably repeated
Become a cold emotion reheated.

Not all musicians are made of music.
Some are talent, some mere facility.
The best I've known live a necessity,
Like physicists slave to mathematics.

Picasso's clowns can only make us dance,
Twist our senses into a whirling trance.

I've wept at the silence a conductor
Held at the end of the Ninth of Mahler,
As if to say, "Behold what's gone before --
Anguish, redemption, hope -- and don't despair."

Autumnal Fantasy (Charles Burchfield)

#86

We could see each moment as a story,
Murmurs of focused imagination --
Illustrated by the moon or the sun --
From the collected works of satori.
We're told that such enlightenment is rare,
Or as ever-present as the air,
Though only if we take the time to breathe.
The nuthatch can ignore the withered leaves
And be ignored by the leaves in their turn,
But each day we fail to irradiate
The forest with our consciousness we burn
It down. We all have stories to relate;
Some we've been shown, but most we must create.
It's the easiest thing, to be. Don't wait.

The Local Group (Hubble)

#85

Andromeda and the Milky Way collide
In the next few billion years, or so:
Not why Frost said, "provide, provide,"
Though it's not a bad way to go.
With some two trillion stars at risk
In the melding of galactic discs,
Odds of stars clashing are rather low.
Consider, the star nearest the sun:
Proxima Centauri; a distant son,
Unlikely to visit anytime soon.
Perhaps a stray Andromedan moon
Might sail our way. With some delay,
The Local Group will join the fray
And bring an end to night and day.

The Sacrifice of Isaac (Rembrandt)

#84

Abraham's great hand covers the mouth and eyes
Of his son; the thrust of the knife so imminent
The angel's grip must knock it from his hand.
"Burnt offering," he was told, so meant to slice
The throat as he would a ram's. God is silent.
The angel, we assume at his Master's command,
Points to Heaven and explains away the slaughter.
Abraham has proven his fear of God, which is all
That's required. In reward, his sons and daughters
Will multiply like stars; his enemies' gates will fall,
And his seed will bless all the nations of the earth.
To the old man it must feel like his own rebirth.
Though his face shows neither terror nor relief,
There is bafflement at the grim power of his belief.

Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (Dali)

#83

There is no time. There's only memory,
Rows of sodden boxes beneath a sea
So pure that even the sardines have dreams
Of swimming through the sun's occluded beams.
A bullet from the brain becomes a memory box,
Transfigured by the melting of the clocks.
Floating mountains and rootless trees in pieces
Will linger, so, until duration ceases.
These aren't headstones of recollection.
Impervious to breath and desiccation,
They can become too numerous to count.
I, for one, would like to know the amount.
Each box retains its substance, color, and shape,
But when it's opened nothing can escape.

Natural Sculpture

#82

The sphere predominates the Milky Way,
As gravity shapes the interstellar clay.
But on the earth it's relatively rare:
Birds' eye, the water droplet in mid air,
Eggs, scat, and pebbles on the beach,
All oblate; less so the orange and the peach.
But what to make of these sculpted stones?
Sentiently, Noguchi could have carved each one.
I found them, years apart, on the Michigan shore.
In summer I waste hours looking for more.
What two hands with a few tools could create,
Took wind, fire, earth, and water to generate.

Fish Magic (Klee)

#81

Is the sky to fish what the celestial is to men?
Do their eyes, being lidless, see more clearly
The dimming when moon eclipses the sun?
Do they wish as they die to swim above the sea?
Bonefish, flounder, barracuda, and drum,
Chaunt spells and curses from within a cauldron,
To tauten the cord and raise the draped muslin
Unveiling the face of the ancient clock tower,
While a three-eyed girl grabs at potted flowers,
And in a corner a boy in a dunce cap cowers.
The gods send down chum and baited hooks,
Dangling constellations and spiral galaxies,
Daring us to hope, to aspire, daring us to look
Past transparent and unfathomable seas.