On a Picture by Cézanne
There’s no description in the braided stone,
the pear, the stone in the pear, the birchbark,
bread hills on the snowfall tablecloth.
The dog of work gnaws the day’s short bone,
snarls a mountainside into lavender and green.
In the mind where objects vanish, almost is all.
Element of pitcher, sky, rockface, blank canvas
plastic and vast in one off-center patch.
To copy what’s invisible, to improvise
a soul of things and remake solid life
into fresh anxious unlifelike form.
Copyright Credit: "On a Picture by Cézanne" from Shadows Burning, © 1995, reprinted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
Source: Poetry (June 2012)