(For B.N.)
Masters, your vision’s over-realized:
I look, I see one
of those details from your paintings
we enlarge which occupy extents
maybe two inches square
the far side of a martyrdom
or of the donkey’s felt-tipp’d ear.
Most daylight’s done. What light is left
reduces fuss, like you insists
on form, and I see air create round
smudged-on objects (trees without blue,
devoid almost of green),
in rhythm, a small
actual “especial scene.”
In this extreme actuality—well, yes,
one facet of a spire is shaded, one’s
caught a glow. This is, I realize,
that Absolute of All
you felt, in your theology
could not quite know, yet were all
but first-in miniature-to show.
Benediction of reality-there’s something to it,
meaning for a moment things, or vice-
versa, are as real as me
or you, in which repose
it was imagined tall blessed ones did dwell,
did walk this side the water from that ripe
mouth of hell.
There’s something to it, as I say:
it seldom comes, and luckily it can’t
be held, air thickens, rhythm breaks, light
grows too grand or disappears. Outside our gallery
would I say luckily again we
play dodge ’em with our fears, and grim
the red mouth reappears.
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