The Night Cafe (Van Gogh), Sonnets #521 and #522

#521

Philosophers say you can’t prove

That two balls in a game of pool,

One struck by the other, will move —

That there’s no reliable rule.

There’s no assurance that today

What happened every time before

Will be repeated any more,

Just because it’s always that way.

I have to ask, how could they know?

Birds in flight could drop like rocks.

In a heat wave we could have snow.

Mountains could fall like building blocks.

My left ankle could turn to wood.

I’ll take my “will” over their “could.”

#522

Not pool, a game of billiards:

A ball struck a ball, two rails, 

And another ball kissed —

Then money changed hands. 

The fool stares at the chalky bed

Where his future sleeps.

Two men rub their ears, 

Hunched beneath vague hats;

Elbows banging the table,

They want their cold beers.

A thief with a glass weeps,

Overhearing old lovers;

When he has downed his gin

The murdering will begin.

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Surf On Rocks (William Trost Richards), Sonnet #520

I know the articulation of waves

As I know the flexing of my hand.

(The big northwestern wind is a muscle

That bashed ten thousand sailors to their graves,

But on the beach can only roil sand,

Turning the inert fleck to corpuscle.)

I used to grow dizzy diving at them,

When my spine rippled and began to twist,

The pain a sweet knotting from calf to wrist —

To wet eyes the sun an exploded gem.

I’d grow nauseous and stumble to the shore,

But the waves, I knew, just wanted me more.
Sucking it into its fat belly’s sway,
The surf last winter stole the beach away.

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Dragon (Hokusai), Sonnet #519

The first dragons were fireflies,

Flickering motes of breath made light —

And then a moment of insight:

Great creatures of death must arise

(Like half-seen floating seeds of sun

Grown winged, clawed, fanged, and enormous,

Lungs furnace hot and vaporous),

Monsters from which most men run.

Not all. The dragon was lazy,

And slept for decades in hazy

Caves, dreaming of nothing men dreamed.

Its scales and half-lidded eyes gleamed.

The wisest men approached and stroked

Its face with love. It never woke.

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Phoenix (Hokusai), Sonnet #518

The Phoenix bursts from its egg of ashes

Every five hundred and eighteen ages.

It will spend years unfurling its plumage

Like crimson, emerald, and golden sashes,

Before it flies. The setting sun rages

In jealousy, cries “You presumptuous midge!”

The Phoenix’s bloodless heart doesn’t beat.

Only its wings that mercilessly blast

The air, and never fold, keep it alive.

Its pearl beak never opens to eat.

Just one exhalation would be its last.

Its fate is to seek and never arrive.

The Phoenix explodes and plunges to earth.

Once, ages ago, there was no rebirth.

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Man Proposes, God Disposes (Edwin Henry Landseer), Sonnet #517

The Provisioner, under a deadline,

Drip-sealed three years worth of tinned goods with lead.

The ships left with 129

Men who would, in less than two years, be dead.

The mythical northwest passage, if found,

Would make Sir Captain Franklin the greatest

Explorer of his age. He was ice bound

For a year and died, laid to frozen rest.

100 men, Erebus and Terror,

Walked to find the Canadian mainland,

Tracked down by the relentless polar bear.

How long before death was each man unmanned,

Turning his eyes toward some other’s food

Or flesh, in a world no less bad than good?

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Joshua Tree (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #516

The Spanish called it the “desert dagger,”

Isote de desierto — Mormons

May have given it the biblical name.

One name implies a dangerous swagger,

The other a religious leader’s palms.

To the tree they are one and the same.

A desert, already half dead, can die.

It needs frost and water, but not too much.

I walk from tree to tree to tree and try

To reach high up enough and lightly touch

The dark green tapered and serrated leaves.

I often prick fingers, sometimes draw blood

(The pain doesn’t know and yet it believes) —

A drop in the sand releases a flood.

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Young Greeks at a Cockfight (Jean-Leon Gerome), Sonnet #515

And so it starts with this, two youths

Setting birds against each other.

One is black, the other red.

(There is never one, but two truths.)

The rest of us do not bother

Until it’s too late — both are dead.

We might have tried to stopped the fight,

Though boy and girl proclaim the right

To this innocent violence.

“That we too are harmed is nonsense,”

They cry. “The world can spare a cock

Or two. It’s not that we would mock

The dead. Instead, we celebrate

Our right to determine their fate.”

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.