from _Fragmentary Ekphrases Based On Paintings Made By Monkeys_

[Black, brown, green, and yellow gouache; by Congo (one of his last paintings)]

“What can I but enumerate old themes…”
—W.B. Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”


Could I not see the orbit of the asterisk
pulsing,
              and then slowly disappearing
below

              the   shimmering
but incredulous

horizon?

                I felt layer upon layer of
anticipation

                      but I knew

not the story’s end,
only its beginning

       like
       a formal ripple
       in a fan of disruption,

like an empty hourglass,

like
          the silent hiss
of paint’s
                      unhurried
hagiography