My Courbet
for Mac
My Courbet
is 12 by 20–
inches, that
is– yet its
sure-footed
cadmium snow
sets the
mountains far
back so they’re
bold and enormous.
The mysterious
ring-bark trees
in the front
have yellowing
leaves which
means that
it’s fall in
this hidden
sierra. If Luis
Hernandez Rojas,
born in Coyula
San Geronimo,
Puebla,Mexico,
on August 25,
1978 ever stops
in to visit his
modest chef
d’oeuvre, I hope
he can say how
he managed to
make so much of
so little. Dirty
old Gustave de-
manded whole
walls to ennoble
his neighbors’
hard lives and
gray deaths
lived in the
chill fatal
shadow of lime-
stone. But some-
thing else
unfolds here in
this hidden
valley which
no one I think
has seen (except
Luis and you
and me). The short
sharp grass is
yellow too and
now the thin-
nest clouds are
wafting by in
our little lunar
universe, sunny
for the moment,
quiet, dry.
