Self-Portrait as Magritte, and: Self-Portrait after Goya

Self-Portrait as Magritte

1.I am the son of man, Magritte,The one in bowler hat and coatWho walks behind you on the street,A tie fixed firmly at his throat.

I am the footsteps following you,The no one that is always there,The stranger on the avenueAdvancing toward the silent square.

I am the absence in the curtainThrough which you see the sea and sky,The doubt you feel when things look certain,The truth behind your alibi.

2.Beneath a triple moon, three menStand in the wasteland outside town.It's nearly dark at half past ten.Two look away. One wears a frown.

The world beyond is cold and bareBut set against a distant light.There are no shadows anywhere.The houses vanish out of sight.

These three men share my look and dressI cannot say which one is me.Three ways I face the emptiness,The central man, the mystery.

3.My mother drowned when I was young.In dreams sometimes I see her face.I wring my hands but hold my tongueAnd stare off into empty space.

There are some things you can't erase.The dress pulled just above her headReveals a hem of Belgian lace.I've never seen a thing so dead.

I wake. The world is not the same.Why should I paint what's merely true?And what is art? A serious gameI play alone. And just for you.

4.No one actually believesThe red sun fixed on a dark tree,The men who fall like autumn leaves,The face that, turned, still looks at me;

No one believes the clouds at noonScudding through a cut-out bird,The candle cup that holds a moon,The pipe whose caption word for word

Gives the lie to what it seems.But isn't illusion half the truth—That silhouette I see in dreamsAnd worry like a missing tooth?

5.One day the dead will disappear.We will not see them anymore.One day all the clouds will clearAnd waves break on an empty shore.

I limn a strange identity.The face I wear on every streetLooks just like the one you seeHanging on the real Magritte.

I paint it just to please my whim.It's best to laugh and not to weep.At night I see my mother's hemAnd the river lays me down to sleep.

6.The kissing lovers' shrouded headsLean together in ignorance:So all are strangers in their bedsAccording to the evidence.

The vision rarely comes out right.A quirk lurks in the commonplace.The day peeks through the scrim of nightAnd a white bird obscures my face.

Where have all the shadows gone?They crowd around the mirror frame.I stare up at the fruit of dawn.You look at me. We are the same.

7.This, then, is my final word,Last testament of René Magritte Who paints the rare and the absurd.I walk along the cobbled street

And say the man that turns from youIs different than you may suppose;He stares off at the distant blue,The gentleman nobody knows.

Picasso had his blue guitar,Dalí his clocks. I tell no lies.I paint the strangers that we are.The self is still our best disguise.

Self-Portrait after Goya

1.When Goya lifts his brush to paint my nightmareHe steadies his right hand and doesn't speak.I cannot move, strapped to my fever chair.He makes a mark. And then I know the meekWill not inherit the kingdom or the kindBe blessed as in some Sunday homily . . .When Goya paints my dream, I see God grindChildren to bits in his maw, I see the treeOn which a corpse is skewered through the assAnd hangs dismembered, dead fish in a heap,And witches stripped to celebrate black massUntil you wake me up, I start from sleepThrashing as though I...