Three Poems

Cézanne’s Dog

What Mathilde Vollmoeller said or what Rilke
said she said at the Salon d’Automne
on a day of rain, was that Cézanne’s intention
was not to describe, to say: this the figure, this the ground,
the object or the space around it, but to be accurate
to his sensations – half-red, blue-red, green –
so if he wasn’t sure, if the precise tone evaded him,
he’d stop and start in another place until
the whole thing fought against itself – the bottle
with the dish, the apple waging war
against the pear – until, exhausted by his efforts,
he’d turn to his self-portrait once again
and paint himself like a dog who looks
into a mirror and thinks, there’s another dog.



San Zachariah
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