THE SHAPE OF THINGS

by George Moore

 

 

Look at this painting
squared by light of
a certain afternoon hour,

hung on the wall out
of reach of the dead,
who were to blame.

See the red roofs
and the boxes, spared
by his new infinity?

Cezanne lost his sight
to oceans, repetition,
the impossible wave.

The ocean was an idea
mounting the sky,
burnt ferruginous blue,

as if there never was
such a blue,
by a minute’s light,

surfaces blending,
the walls fading to hay
beneath the sun’s weight.

They say his eyes
were not right from a time
early in his childhood;

that made him pass
so easily from one plane
to another, from road

to wall, to sea,
unstymied by distances. 
No word could capture

what he truly saw,
no word for what seeing
must have been.

Hardened nightmare
of colors.  Then,
consecrated into history.

But in time, place becomes
real: Auvers, Arc Valley,
La Roche-Guyon.

Nothing but fever
for how little we actually
see, when we are seeing.

 

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