"Tell me, is the rose naked

or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal

the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets

of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder

than a train standing in the rain?"

"Book of Questions, III" by Pablo Neruda, translated by William

O'Daly

Image: "Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway" by

JMW Turner

"Alas! is even love too weak

To unlock the heart, and let it speak?

Are even lovers powerless to reveal

To one another what indeed they feel?

I knew the mass of men conceal'd

Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd

They would by other men be met

With blank indifference, or with blame

reproved;

I knew they lived and moved

Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest

Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet

The same heart beats in every human

breast!"

From "The Buried Life" by Matthew Arnold

Image: "The Lovers" by René Magritte

"Across the floor flits the mechanical toy,

fit for a king of several centuries back.

A little circus horse with real white hair.

His eyes are glossy black.

He bears a little dancer on his back.

She stands upon her toes and turns and turns.

A slanting spray of artificial roses

is stitched across her skirt and tinsel bodice.

Above her head she poses

another spray of artificial roses.

His mane and tail are straight from Chirico.

He has a formal, melancholy soul.

He feels her pink toes dangle toward his back

along the little pole

that pierces both her body and her soul

and goes through his, and reappears below,

under his belly, as a big tin key.

He canters three steps, then he makes a

bow,

canters again, bows on one knee,

canters, then clicks and stops, and looks at

me.

The dancer, by this time, has turned her

back.

He is the more intelligent by far.

Facing each other rather desperately—

his eye is like a star—

we stare and say, 'Well, we have come this

far.'"

"Cirque D'Hiver" by Elizabeth Bishop

"Even sound writers talk mostly in a drawling

And dreaming way about it. He,

Who hath given the best definition

Of most things, hath given but an imperfect one,

Here, informing us that a happy life

Is one without impediment to virtue ....

In fact, hardly anything which we receive

For truth is really and entirely so,

Let it appear plain as it may, and let

Its appeal be not only to the understanding,

But to the senses; for our words do not follow

The senses exactly; and it is by words

We receive truth and express it.”

So says Walter Savage Landor in his Imaginary

Conversation between Sir Philip Sidney

And Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, all three,

In a sense, my own psychiatrists, shrinking

The sense of contingency and confusion

Itself to a few terms I can quote, ponder

Or type: the idea of wisdom, itself, shrinks."

From "Essay on Psychiatrists" by Robert Pinsky

Image: "The Happy Writers" by David Salle

"Sheets entangle him

Naked on his bed

Like a toppled mast

Slack sails bedeck

At sea, no ballast

For that even keel

He cannot keep—

No steering wheel

As he falls asleep"

"Heat Wave" by Samuel Menashe

Image: "Eyes in the Heat" by Jackson Pollock

"going on everywhere

in summer’s cold wind

winging through hollies.

Banana plants flap

like canvas sails

above a dugout cellar

where Latino boys shoulder

cans of dirt, rocks.

Three doors down

more or less . . .

things feel approximate

like my window draft haunted

by Un’aura amorosa

I’ve listened and whistled to

too much this morning

that renews me bitterly

sweet like the mug

on the pit bull

neighborhood kids adore,

recovering from surgery

while his owner Mike or Fred

three doors down

lays Italian tiles

on his rebuilt stoop.

There’s a small tremble

in the familiar orders

that keep us, that we keep,

the ocean’s big breath

through high treetops,

then lower down

a housepainter’s billowing

black nets suck and mash

above those Michoacáns

digging a duplex foundation

for New World gold:

all those respirations

in the pushy nonstop wind

thrown like a threshold

between us and the trench,

us and whatever’s there

underworld or overworld

where certain friends say

they will, at the end

of the things of this world,

be laid to rest,

but (I say) what rest?"

"Renovations" by W. S. Di Piero

Image: "Ad Parnassum" by Paul Klee

"In fighting the sea, pinging

Neptune hidden deep with his heavy

trident, the emperor Caligula had his men

use whatever means necessary, tearing

up the waves, rending still water

with swords. The emperor knew

Neptune wouldn't give up easily:

take no prisoners, he said. Turn

back the Nereids and their offspring,

they'll share no food at our

table. In his human form Caligula

was the iron man, chief worshipper

of his own cult, his priests

of industry heaping wealth

at his feet. He grew giddy

with success. Turn them back!

Turn them back! And the empire

jumped, caught up in his fury.

Alone with his thoughts, his immensity,

Caligula said to himself: the sea

can throw up such nasty surprises,

there’s room for only one god

on the high seas. I will guarantee

safe passage for those who take

the test, who kiss the bootstraps

of my troops, who worship me.

When Neptune sent his boats

Caligula scrambled his forces,

put the empire on war footing,

bunkered down in Canberra,

said he was doing it for love

of humanity, love of his people."

"Turning" by John Kinsella

Image: "Raft of the Medusa" by Théodore

Géricault

"Back from vacation", the barber announces,

or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan.

They are amazed to find the workaday world

still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs,

their customers having hardly missed them, and

there being so sparse an audience to tell of the

wonders,

the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas,

the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved

in foreign languages, the beggars, the flies,

the hotel luxury, the grandeur of marble cities.

But at Customs the humdrum pressed its claims.

Gray days clicked shut around them; the yoke still fit,

warm as if never shucked. The world is still so small,

the evidence says, though their hearts cry, "Not so!"

"Back From Vacation" by John Updike

Image: "Paris Through My Window" by Marc Chagall

"Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops

fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon."

From "Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Taylor

Coleridge

Image: "Winter Landscape I, Kochel, Bavaria,

1909" by Wassily Kandinsky

"Once in a while

you may come across a place

where everything

seems as close to perfection

as you will ever need.

And striving to be faultless

the air on its knees

holds the trees apart,

yet nothing is categorically

thus, or that, and before the dusk

mellows and fails

the light is like honey

on the stems of tussock grass,

and the shadows are mauve birthmarks

on the hills."

"Place" by Brian Turner

Image: "6 Days in Nelson and Canterbury" by

Colin McCahon

"The man we surround, the man no one

approaches

simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps

not like a child, not like the wind, like a man

and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor

even

sob very loudly—yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he

makes about him

in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,

and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize

him

stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their

minds

longing for tears as children for a rainbow."

From "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" by Les

Murray

Image: "Merzbilde med regnbue (Merzpicture with

Rainbow)" by Kurt Schwitters

"Twelve o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium."

From "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" by TS Eliot

Image: "Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper

"We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o’erthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world’s worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth."

From "Ode" by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Image: "The Tower of Babel" by Pieter Bruegel

the Elder

"3. Autumn Testament

It is not the farther to go, but the father to be.

It is not the longing, but the belonging.

It is not the clasp on the purse, but the purse on the lips.

It is not above suspicion, but under the pump.

It is not the unsettled stomach, but the unsettled mind.

It is not the need for god, but the desire for god.

It is not evidence of a divine creator, but evidence against a divine

creator.

It is not the Gaza Strip, but Gazza whipping his shirt off.

It is not talking with your feet, but footing it with your mouth.

It is not the parting shot, but the passing shot.

It is not the power, but the spin.

It is not the slant, but the enchantment.

It is not the whale in the room, but the pea in the pod.

It is not under the mattress, but staring you in the face."

From "Demarcations" by James Brown

Image: From The Separation Wall, Israel/Palestine by Banksy

"you want to

serve & to be left alone

to serve & be served,

understanding tough

materials, marl & old timber,

the rich claggy rind

of the world where

dinosaurs once

were kings : well they’re gone now though

they survived longer

than we have

yet, but then we know, don’t we,

citizen, that there’s nowhere

to defect to, & that

living in the

universe doesn’t

leave you

any place to chuck

stuff off

of."From "Pathway to the Sea" by Ian Wedde

Image: "Pathway to the Sea" by Ralph Hotere