After Seeing Matisse: The Vases, The Naked

After Seeing Matisse: The Vases, The Naked

We, don’t we, look into the looking: the vases

the faces the way we see it all staged

and placed in the right shade (it’s at least

as crucial, say, as light) the negative

space Matisse tried to make when painting

when claiming the stage of open places.

Do we, while looking into the looking,

plummet or ricochet? And which takes more

risk, discipline: the going deeper into

ourselves if the ricochet isn’t ricocheted

again or going deeper into them to find what

all it was that made us--God or chemistry

or cosmic star dust colliding and riding

all the way on the astral winds to where

we stand right now, what goes into it all or

what goes on and on and on? There are lovers

in this world who never ever touch, as if

their bodies were a monastery, as if walking

the vow of silence was how they made

love and instead of starting at the heart

or the middle of the brain (thought?) or,

that absurd cliché: crotch, it begins for them

in the jaw and along the line of muscle

that all night tightens unsettled unset, it is

the instrument begging to be tuned by the tips

(tongue, pivot) then fingers, lips, without

shapes taking up the habit of words.  There’s just

sounds, no names, no OH, or AH, or MMM,

only maybe a growl, a rumble under the muscle,

a subtle pulse in that muscle in the monastery

of lovers.  And in this I am one gone into

the fog on the rocks, necks and spines diving

down to low water.  My monastery.  See:

the back of me, not my face, unless you run

ahead of me and look back to wait--look into

the looking.  Hmph.  Let’s turn back

to the vase or the face (I’ll take the face)

Let’s bathe it slow and close so the quiver

of arrows in the jaw will drop like a camisole

to the floor--let’s kiss what’s been made

naked:  the painted.  Because doesn’t she

have to touch what paints her?  fingertips

or lips?  She has to, or what good, tell me,

is the paint?  Or true, the eye?  Are we such

hypocrites as to celebrate with our gawk

and then not call it art?  What, where, why,

or when without touch?  Without divine,

are we?  What, really, are we seeing, looking
at?