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.”

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My Human Disguise.

Madame Jeantaud at the Mirror (Edgar Degas), Sonnet #514

Wishes of vanity, he seems to say,

Won’t be fulfilled. The tilted mirror’s ray

Reveals something akin to human clay —

A woman whose beauty has seen its day —

But what she sees is young, pretty, and gay,

The famous star of a popular play.

Perhaps the silvered glass begins to fray,

Or fractured light has lost the will to stay

The hours’, the minutes’, the seconds’ decay.

The end of her last day begins today

(Though she might be granted a day’s delay).

It’s a painting! An imagined display!

The woman is still a blossom in May,

Nor would anyone dare wish her away.

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My Human Disguise.

Evening: The Red Tree (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #513

I have never dreamed of the tree,

Though I believe it dreams of me.

Leafless, as if empty of thought,

It blushes in the setting sun,

Emotionally overwrought,

Blossoming caught out of season.

It’s inner branches, clotted, dark,

Hide the almost asleep catbird,

(Inventor of the millionth word),

Whose claws are locked on ragged bark.

The red tree stretches to the sky.

Beneath, I sleep and dream of love,

Or old battles — sometimes I fly

Under the sun, sometimes above.

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Woman With A Lute (Johannes Vermeer), Sonnet #512

We saw the rise and fall of melody,

The tuning and detuning of a tone,

Rhythms sprung then stretched like jackhammer beats

And lyrics wrenched, all rhyme, no prosody.

We’ve returned to beating skin with a bone

And symphonies are nothing but repeats.

Once lovers were courted by serenade —

The woman in her boudoir with a lute,

Her suitor in the garden with a flute —

Notes intertwining before they must fade.

Music was a language then, not sound,

The tracing of a portal to the heart,

How emotions given voice were found

Not mortal, but a becoming of art.

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My Human Disguise.

Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun (Nicolas Poussin), Sonnet #511

I am Orion, the last giant left.

I lost my eyes to a vengeful father,

Having left lovely Merope bereft

Of her virgin state. I am the hunter!

(Who will lose his life to a scorpion.)

I carry on my back Cedalian,

Who directs me toward the healing rays

Of the rising sun. I hear above me

The laughter of Diana. “Fool!” she says,

You hope to see now you’ve killed chastity!”

I know her, that vain bitch of a huntress.

When the sun has burned away my blindness

I’ll put an arrow through her bare left breast,

Then fly to the stars for infinite rest. 

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My Human Disguise.

Abstract Imaginary Garden (Paul Klee), Sonnet #510

Imagination is the canary

In the mind. (Reason is only a song.)

We’re dead without the imaginary,

The will to conjure what might have been wrong

In what we’ve done, or to confront the pain

Of a child we failed to love or console.

How we ignore the garden of the brain!

We stare only at the eye level bole

Of the dogwood and ignore its blossoms,

Think ideas instead of chrysanthemums.

Compassion, the garden’s brightest flower,

Can’t be described except in images.

It hides, folded in a secret bower,

Mostly unseen for a thousand ages.

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My Human Disguise.

Galileo Facing the Roman Inquisition (Cristiano Banti), Sonnet #509

Galileo is gone and forgotten.

The earth is again as flat as a coin

Around which the sun is slowly going,

Nourishing all that is raw and rotten.

A feather falls faster than a lead ball.

Beelzebub will find you if you call.

The bald liar is our new scientist;

There is no proven fact he cannot twist.

Poor Galileo was forced to recant:

Today we have the canting sycophant.

Hence it’s obvious that the earth must cool;

To think differently makes me a fool.

I’ve seen a bald eagle flying backwards.

A plague of fat rats invades our back yards.

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

My Human Disguise.