Aphrodite is exacting a tribute of me for all my race.
—Ovid, Heroides
1. une femme
There is no abstract art.
You must always start
with something. Afterwards
you can remove all traces of reality.
By the time of their meeting, he
was indeed a Master.
Removing her reality
took no more effort
than sketching a face on air.
The Minotaur's passion sated,
he left her a twisted, flattened shell,
curled like wet canvas on his padded chair,
mouth soundlessly screaming
from the same side of her face
that both eyes now started from.
He sighed in satisfaction,
then began the erasure.
Soon, no one there.
As with many before her.
He had not learned her name,
and did not care.
2. son visage bleu
Casagemas's head protruded
from the sheet that wrapped his
body; eyelids swollen,
temple stained black with
gunpowder, skin blue and
waxen in the candlelight.
Pablo watched them bear away
his best friend from Barcelona,
slain by a woman's refusal
as surely as she'd tugged his
fingers on the pistol with
puppet strings. Pablo knew
then: all women are witches.
Only an equal sorcerer
can survive them.
When the scarlet fever delirium
claimed him from Madrid,
he had lain in a down-stuffed bed
in a Catalonian mountain villa,
staring through a narrow window
at the verdant slopes; things seen
in that haze, shapes cavorting
in midair, opening doors
that weren't there, opening
space to show him views
from all angles at once.
Memories gnawed at the back
of his grieving brain: how to
find again that visionary state,
force it to obey his desires?
Until he found the first hints,
Casagemas's blue face swelled
behind every new encounter.
3. l'Arlequin
Some claim he infused those
thousands of canvasses with
hidden arcana, invocations
au culte mithraïque, tributes
to the god who slew
the celestial bull; had he heard,
Pablo would have laughed,
and rightly so, for the only alchemy
fused into his creations
was a magic he alone invented.
Against the skin of Fernande,
his first mistress, and first woman
he would claim to truly love,
the rapture of seeing outside
space returned, this time
to a clear, unfevered mind,
and he knew he could be
the new Harlequin, protégé
of trickster Hermes, author
of any wizardry his lusts demanded.
He painted himself,
handsome, sullen, clad in
diamonds of rose and black,
wearing Harlequin's peaked hat,
the nature of his magic
as yet unsculpted. He filled
the following years with a quest
for final configurations,
sharpened the vision that saw
from all sides at once, allowing
him to shape others to his whim.
And at last he shed
the Harlequin's chequered skin;
pierced and thrown away
with the toss of a horn
as he assumed the form
(distilled from the arenas
of Spain) that suited him best.
4. Minotauromachia
Do all women harbor a need
for annihilation? Most would deny it
but if one did yearn, he would find her,
smell her an auction hall away,
taste her scent amid hundreds
in the newly opened gallery,
home in on her through
crowded streets; the Minotaur
weaving toward its meal.
As helpless as Europa draped
across the bull, she would come
to where he led, brook no struggle
as the Beast compressed,
flattened, conformed her
to its all-consuming vision.
Why not the genitals
in place of the eyes,
and the eyes between the legs?
Even those whom he allowed
names, whom he spared
the Bull's machinations:
what of them? One hanged,
two driven insane, one shooting
herself (just as Casagemas);
others that survived live on
only in the story he painted.
5. son seul amour vrai
How to reconcile the cocky hero
whose heart tore at the thought
of a Basque village bombed,
who painted a protest of
war's horrors, pressed postcards
of that protest into the hands
of Nazi soldiers, and yet
was never arrested; could the same
man be the Beast who tore
scores of women into surreal
contortions, and casually disposed
of the remains? Could one
divide himself so completely
into parallel planes?
Though he once imagined it so,
no avenging angel with hawk beak
and barrel chest ever descended
to stuff the Minotaur back
in his Harlequin cloak, bear
the wailing creature away.
Though he uttered the word
too many times to count,
only one woman truly earned
his adoration. As he lounged
in the Chateau Vauvenargue,
he recognized her form,
sensuous curves out of his
deepest dreams, drawing into
focus. He readied himself
for the one mistress
that remained to conquer
or at last be bested by,
knowing he loved her truly,
knowing she loved him even more.
I think of Death all the time.
She is the only woman
who never leaves me.