Painter and Model : Paris, 1928

the artist and his model

turn your back
but stay in view at the same time
(now look away
anything else confuses)

stand still without saying a word

you can’t see but this is how
i separate day from night

and the starless sky
from the empty heart

Lovers (1923)

the morning of the world

i have a face cut from ice
a heart pierced in a thousand places
so to remember
always the same voice
the same gestures
and my laughter
heavy
as a wall
between you and me

the ones who are most alive
seem the most still

behind the milky way
a shadow dances

our gaze climbs toward the stars

Still life with lemon and oranges (1936)

oranges from the south of spain

stars hang out at night
linen left to dry

red geraniums along the balconies
nodding, nodding
willing to agree to anything
just to keep their color

a gang of kids running through the streets
faceless pranksters
the moon a plate held before each face
who am i? saying who am i
running through the streets saying who am i

the shadows of the buildings
becoming cats that move away
the trees immobilized
left to stand alone in the dark
rubbing their bark from regret
like cicadas

oranges have more delicacy
softly falling, falling
in the groves
on the hills
softly eaten, eaten
by the earth
swallowed whole
as if by a snake
not earth
as if by millions
slithering in the groves at night
millions
stalking the oranges that fall softly
softly to the earth

hunting there in the groves
that form a ring around each town

Le Sauvetage (1932)

a view of the sea

the sun slumbers
on the rim of a straw hat

same initials

i don’t have the time
to wait for dawn

who’s promised to meet me
address unknown

life in the open air

i’m listening to another sea
at the depth of shellfish

you play with the ball without doubting it

sometimes
the sun goes down not far
from the shore

Dora and the Minotaur (1936/37)

night moves

in a wine glass
sleeves of a sleeveless dress
knotted
around its stem
and a bull’s head sleeping, breathless
tangled
in the scent of pearl and warm flesh
standing on a drumbeat
balanced
by a prism’s deceptive stammer

Vase Aztèque aux Quatre Visages : Aztec Vase with Four Faces (1957)

whisper

the shiver of hands
blind without memory
and so
friendly still
yet sweet like the words
forgotten
to the tremble of lips

quiet
there are no surprises here
rest your eyelids
until they become stone
rest your heart
until it stops

(it beats now only for itself
in some secret place)

Etching (1970)

a personal

mature man
holding his nose
to life
desires young woman
who
is indifferent to
oranges
and longs for those
days
before umbrellas

Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (1932)

red nude

you swept the ashes of winter
lit red and nude
drawn naked with smoke
and coal
still glowing
in the shadow of paper flowers
pressed to walls of plaster
and stone

Weeping Woman (1937)

when he stopped writing her

the letter always bled for her for her eyes (brown as those old bottles in the medicine cabinet) bleeding words like teardrops yet without spilling onto the green tile floor those words always pure only staining the paper glossy black ink blood like muslin stuck to an old wound those words always strong yet blurred, obscure words only a scholar would find obscene

happy are those who die because they have returned to those first crumbs of dirt that fed us to that first hole to that soft black and smell of coal

Head of a man with a hat - Paris, December 1912

man in the hat

man who wears a hat sits still near the back unmoved by the world or the exposed breast of a statue (brain waves do not discharge through a fedora)

tag attached: bald is sanitary

oranges have more delicacy raw smelly and afterward singing allons enfants de patrie ding dang dong like that, all frog-ese so we don’t understand chanteused stiff basso profundo to excite to let us see with the clarity of a dream curled with hate set firm, firmer in the arms of a sleeveless girl then slung to sea level white as a leopard’s eye

remember its peroxide bathed, bleached inclined on the pillow just at the angle of expectancy without a hat sideward glance and the crippled heels of angels sparking down the hall

bulletin: young man willing to wear false beard to ease the pain for all

or trumpet blues broken played horizontal touched by seaweed hands in the light of boats (unfurled)

slowly

and the memory dies slowly half-forgotten, half-remembered

halved again

slowly

only
to begin
again

grim molecules of love