Theses of Passion

In the gallery everybody is seized by somebody,
though the paintings and sculptures have flown
from the hand of the artist they are not free.
She may have exorcised her heart,
his mind with the intention of a liberation
but they are still of them, a soul’s imprint.

In a collage of mess and ownership
blue hair perms, hands are not of her body
no longer hers. A chair is a child’s present
on which a woman sits paddled by the fate
of the past and gripped by memories of a future
reaching out, misplaced, unsure appendices.

Love is all a pleading, a tragedy, some god
and maiden in the woods, Clytie turned sunflower,
Echo calling to the empty ravine, ravine, ravine.
Always in the background some battle rages,
a Guernica, a triptych, a Hemingway off to war,
mortality left to a morgue, or an eternal shadow-burnt.