Amass comrades,
Tell of your fractured spirit;
They may perhaps share your taste,
But in no way
Hang stick poetry
With Shakespeare,
Like Claude Monnet
Accompanying Renata Bernal
To the ballroom.
There is nothing abstract,
Or occult
In allegories
Of men parting
And women crying
Like clouds
Hanging over Kauai.
If I desire to be pedestrian
I would walk
The middle-of-the-road.
For Christ sake
Let’s write … gems.
If this charge is too tedious
Our job is to listen.
If Housman lived today and spoke of Terrance,
would rhyme and structure be his "stupid stuff?"
If he could wax poetic now,
what would it be that killed the cow?
Can image and the music be enough?
Were you to walk a wood some snowy eve,
a painting in your head by Robert Frost,
revise and take the liberty;
set his restrictive musing free,
how much of the meaning would be lost?
Paintings by Monnet can fill the senses;
a quiet Redlin sunset can delight.
Even though it's fairly certain
Monnet's colors match the curtain,
does either painter have it wrong, or right?
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