Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 7, Adulthood (Hilma af Klint), Sonnet #452

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My Human Disguise.

Behind closed eyes, what’s written I redact —

Such is not just an idea but an act.

I don’t mean dreams, nor the imagined fact,

Like the nautilus, a chambered prison

Of the real, the unreal, and the abstract.

All I see is suspect and misprision.

Then bloom the perfect flowers of the now,

The dance of the ideal shapes, the entr’acte

Between times (those blind-eyed scenes of the show).

Now doesn’t admit even one and three,

Only two, which becomes nonentity

And leaves a shape we only think we see.

It’s all we know, not all we need to know.

Bird in Space (Constantin Brancusi), Sonnet #451

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My Human Disguise.

A bird in flight, unless it is diving,

Will spread and flash its wings in relentless

Thrust upon the air, a constant striving

For elevation, distance, a restless

Agitation driven by hunger’s need,

Expressed in unmindfully graceful speed.

Only a bird in space can fold its wings

As it rises and point up with its beak,

Not needing to look down to hunt, to seek.

And no bird in airless flight ever sings.

The artist could have named it Bird In Flight,

But that would have tethered it to the ground.

You say he has, here, with a marble mound.

Imagined, the bird disappears in sight.

Narcissus (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) Sonnet #450

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My Human Disguise.

I don’t call that man a nattering ass

Who says he created my looking glass

Since I opened his mouth to amuse me

With my own exquisite philosophy.

No one can say I didn’t make the world

That flaps like a flag some soldier unfurled.

I needn’t apologize that I willed

To have that soldier spared, wounded, or killed.

There’s no one to extend my regrets to,

Except my entirely imagined “you.”

I make, making sure I can’t change today.

“Prove it!” you demand, which I made you say.

There’s only my beautiful Narcissus

And can be only him and me, no “us.”

Note: I also write about this great painting
in Sonnet #351.

The Cave at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Utagawa Hiroshige), Sonnet #449

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My Human Disguise.

A sacred wave chases men from the shore

A sacred tree survives the wind and wrack

A sacred root clutches a rocky crack

A sacred cave with silk smooth walls and floor 

This all exists because I stand outside,

My eye less a lens than a picture frame.

My mind shutters, cannot close, opens wide

Dying to give everything a name.

Three men venture slowly into the cave,

Carry one lamp they will light at the nave

Where the sea’s voice is echoic and grave

And the light is not particle or wave.

They bring nothing else, no prayer to say

In this mouth opened by ancient sea fray. 

Contrast (Order and Chaos) (M.C. Escher), Sonnet # 448

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My Human Disguise.













Which of these is the impossible object?

I think the bottle, pipe and flowerpot

Are too much victims of serene neglect.

The string isn’t tied with a proper knot.

The opened can and the crumpled up box

Are both containers that don’t come with locks.

Nothing is whole in itself — the heel plate,

The cork, or the sardines someone just ate.

Even the tool (I don’t know what it’s for)

Needs some receptive substances to score.

You think I’m ignoring the obvious,

A crystal globe that’s pierced with pyramids,

An object of reflections marring grids.

The only impossible things are us.

Blind Man With A Lantern (Sengai), Sonnet # 447

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My Human Disguise.








Sengai! Is the lantern lit?

Granted, your point stabs us with wit.

An old parable, forgotten

And obvious, like a dark cave,

Empty and dry, but not rotten,

Composed by a man deadly brave.

The blind man taps his walking stick

And that may be his burning wick.

To see is to know it is not

To see but to know but a jot

To see in our thought’s darkest blot

Seeing that is and that is not.

Tap, tap, tap, my old frowning friend.

Only you see beyond the bend. 

Friedrich Nietzsche (Edvard Munch), Sonnet #446

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My Human Disguise.

He stands as if on the opposite rail —

On the same old circumambient bridge —

From the man with two strangers on his trail.

His forehead is a rain-carved granite ridge.

Though he seems composed, thoughtful, hands steady,

He might be going insane already.

The other’s panicked cry doesn’t make noise,

While Fritz shadows his pain in equipoise.

They say his sly sister Elizabeth

Let his mustache grow to cover his teeth

And tongue that in a mock rictus of death

Would twist and grind, never ceasing to seethe.

He called himself a nitroglycerine

Antidote for no god, if not for sin.