PAIN
hope not being hope
until all ground for hope
has vanished
Moore
Where to stand
When hope’s
Ground
Has shape-shifted
Is a question
Hart Crane
May have asked
Himself
More than once
God knows
The ground before
Him
Broken asphalt
Stained with ink
Recall too
How the muralist
David Alfaro Siqueiros
On beginning
Crane’s portrait
Requested
The head-bent American
Close his eyes
As there was
He said
Too much
Pain
In them
I wish
Siqueiros’s dark oils
In the end
Had showed us
What he meant but sadly
No
Perhaps pain
As a painterly
Subject
Is best left
To the medieval brush
Of allegory
For if Dickinson
Called Hope
The thing with feathers
Pain can squat
In the guise of
A crow
Grunk-grunking
Under a beech tree
Eyeing
The upraised hand
Of St. Francis
As painted by Giotto
The saint
In a shaft of sunlight
About to speak
Of the Creator’s love
For even such
As these
Who spear
With beaks the living
And the dead
_______
OPHELIA AND NINE-AND-FIFTY SWANS
A lecture
On the pre-Raphaelites’
Use of drapery
The speaker
After a sip of water
In passing spoke of
“The Wild Swans at Coole”
As ripe for
A Rossetti’s brush
He raised an eyebrow
Why was Yeats
Sure of the exact count
Identical white
Asses ducking in all directions
Or waddling
He laughed at a joke
We supposed
Private stopping to turn
And point at “Ophelia”
By John Everett Millais
(1851-1852)
There and there
His slender beam
Probed her supine form
Her half-shut eyes
Her parted hair
Floating on the stream
With its water-
Lilies and weeds
Embracing her
Do not try this
On your own
Ladies
It can lead
To a bad end
He showed his teeth
Count yourselves
Lucky if you
Just float
In some motel
Pool or tub
Green tile an old friend
