Jody's Notes
So imagine that you're standing in front of a painting. Something like Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights." (But don't think of that item too literally since I'm clearly imagining the painting in a different way.) And imagine, somehow, that what's in the painting is living. But trapped flatly in the painting. That too is a form of hell, I guess.
Christ strikes a pose
(little winged heads
flank him for contrast).
Depth has no place here: His thick
blood, now only stained glass,
drains to a pool, only broad only wide.
And down below, near where the red stain must run out,
there’s wallowing horns, perhaps a bearded face
(perhaps a tail): certainly
the succoring sounds of something drowning.
The faithful alone hear the music
from the flat inside of all this; for me
it’s just an image (I’m deaf). Judgment too
will not make sense of it.
© 2003 Jody Azzouni