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| Peter Paul Rubens The Triumph of Venus 1628 oil on panel (grisaille) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Peter Paul Rubens Design for Title-page ca. 1638 oil on panel (grisaille) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Eustache Le Sueur Bacchus and Ariadne ca. 1640 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Eustache Le Sueur Meekness 1650 oil on panel Art Institute of Chicago |
Inches
I wondered if we weren't lonely for the golden dark smiles
That returned to us during the month of September causes
I wondered if their enslavement to a dark ruler
That counted the inches of their lives together
I wondered if we weren't orphans
Who returned those smiles to others
I wondered what those golden dark smiles said to one another
I wondered of the gold on the moon
I wondered of the golden key I held in my hand
That unlocked the moon for ourselves
I wondered of our freedoms
We'd rather have been orphans
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| Guercino The Vocation of St Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga ca. 1650 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Benedetto Luti Christ and the Woman of Samaria ca. 1715-20 oil on copper Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg Lake Scene, Evening 1792 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Walter Sickert La rue Pecquet, Dieppe ca. 1908-1909 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Walter Sickert Envermeu, Normandy ca. 1924 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
Eventful Angels
We lived under a dark moon
How a chain is being wound
through our lives
That counted the seconds eerily
during time
We lived during darkness
We shall have been further enchanted
during a chain of events
That added our lives differently
during time
We lit candlelight on another star
We explored another kind of darkness
during our lives
We explored other kinds of angels
during time
We lived during an enchanted forest
We re-discovered our own star
during a trail of events
That reasoned our lives differently
during time
But we lived during a wilderness
That mysteriously wound the chimes
through our lives
That counted the eventful angels
during time
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| Walter Sickert The Rural Dean (self-portrait of Sickert with his third wife, Thérèse Lessore) ca. 1932 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| John Maxwell Fish Market 1934 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| John Maxwell Landscape with houses and ancient bridge ca. 1934 oil on canvas mounted on panel National Galleries of Scotland |
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| John Maxwell Falling Vase 1941 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Mark Rothko Black on Maroon 1958 oil paint, acrylic paint, and glue tempera on canvas Tate Gallery |
Spring Lake
Ironically, thank your iron stars, bub
Ever to think a link, to have linked seaweed, bub
At length, At strength – for lock and key,
Oh, how hard! Oh how hard at the bottom of the Lake,
I have survived an iron sea bubble, for a cushion,
To have peeped through a keyhole at salt and spray and silver stars
– poems are from A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: the Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (Brooklyn : The Song Cave, 2013)