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| Peter Paul Rubens The Union of Earth and Water ca. 1620 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Anthony van Dyck Virgin and Child 1628 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Jacques Courtois A Battle ca. 1655-70 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
Bon Vivre
Vivre, Vivre,
Don't live forever, Vivre,
Good livers don't live forever, Vivre,
Stars don't,
We don't,
Live forever, sharpen ourselves,
For a magnificent eternal occasion
And of an occasion
I saw one star fading
It bid itself, Vivre,
Candled itself, Handled itself,
For must it stay lit forever
On the eternally magnificent bitter black nights?
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| Anonymous German artist Grant of Arms or of Nobility in the Holy Roman Empire (shield-of-arms flanked by figures of Mars and Minerva) ca. 1700-1725 pigment on vellum (fragment) Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Anonymous German artist Grant of Arms or of Nobility in the Holy Roman Empire (shield of arms) ca. 1675-1725 pigment on vellum (fragment) Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Anonymous French artist Alexandre et Éphestion (from hand-painted album titled L'Histoire Universelle) ca. 1700-1800 watercolor British Museum |
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| Thomas Stothard Intemperance - Mark Antony and Cleopatra (sketch for staircase decoration at Burghley House, Northamptonshire) ca. 1802 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Francis Danby The Deluge 1840 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
Little Is To Be Said
little is to be said
Over tomorrow
little is to be said
Over today
little is to be said
Over a raindrop
little is to be said
Over a parade bearing a casket
little is to be said
Over yesterday's particle of a parade
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| Jacobus van Looy Blooming Clover ca. 1897 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacobus van Looy Summer Luxuriance ca. 1890-1910 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Charles Ricketts Don Juan and the Commander ca. 1905 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Natalia Goncharova Linen 1913 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
Lakewell
I once had a mind
Like a little butterfly
That floated away in the silvery distance
Once upon a time
I wandered over to a nymph
During the stiff autumn sunshine
Still I wanted a mind
Wrapped up in a soft cocoon of hope
And never to despair
Yet and all over time
What the nymph said to me
That wove the vine of time and hush and sunshine
Yet once upon a time
I wanted to have been a butterfly
That floated away in the lake distance
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| Walter Sickert High Steppers (The Plaza Tiller Girls) ca. 1938-39 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Joseph Beuys Hearts of the Revolutionaries - Passage of the Planets of the Future 1955 watercolor on card Tate Gallery |
– poems are from A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: the Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (Brooklyn : The Song Cave, 2013)