Tryptic Surmises - Ekphrastics For William Hawkins & Caravaggio, Both Painting Horses Poem by Warren Falcon

'... that any coherent understanding of what language is and how language performs, that any coherent account of the capacity of human speech to communicate meaning and feeling is, in the final analysis, underwritten by the assumption of God's presence. I will put forward the argument that the experience of aesthetic meaning in particular, that of literature, of the arts, of musical form, infers the necessary possibility of this 'real presence'... the seeming paradox of its] 'necessary possibility'... when we come face to face with a text and work of art or music which is to say when we encounter the 'other' in its condition of freedom, [it] is a wager on transcendence... a wager on God.' — George Steiner, from Real Presences p.3


1
HORSE - Hawkins


How would he now depict it,

even a corner of it,

paint it,

busy with the making
of it -

belly's too much,
needs thinning, haunches
trimmed too to size, or
not,

concise seizure of
eye and paint dependent
upon hands, monumental
concerns aright or at least
perspectives' private
suffering amidst, against,

or in the teeth of,

daily concerns
taken on as
ultimate-form

It is

visual commentary, response
imaged, is backyard ruin put
to good uses, kindness extended
in hammer's claw on cast
off wood, it is Crow near the
barred door, and with heart,
with heart meds, provide limit
to dulling

descents,

such may then
find yet-again's
Desire, may
plunge further,
deeper,

deeper still,

into muck magic of
shorter days given
to winter, to longer
nights generously
dumped proportion
control upon the human

Such occupies, with familiars,
allusive smears serving now
and ahead who will partake
of the offering, what will be
held, will be healed in their

beholding

nuanced in cloud swatch

in land swath tumbled


2
HORSE - Caravaggio

from one's back
see the vision -
a massive horse
distorts God
back into image
necessary for the
dark to see what
can be spread upon dirt

to see what resurrection
there is in the smell of paint

to find again the desire immense
deeper/still deeper mud magic of
shorter days in winter,
in long nights generously
pouring out stains-allusive
serving now and before
to ancestrally partake of
this offering-place, this altar
steeped, cured in contemplation -

sample of nuanced cloud

strip of land collapsed


3
HORSE - Both Hawkins & Caravaggio

then see how the belly is too much,
must be diluted, a new leg cut to size
a brief seizure of eyes on the swollen
hock

paint

depends utterly upon hands,
a'rights a monumental problem
or at least the prospect of

suffering

dislocation

oneself
in the middle

against

or

teething daily concerns

paint assumes ultimate form