There’s no description in the braided stone,
the pear, the stone in the pear, the birchbark,
bread hills on the snowfall tablecloth.
The dog of work gnaws the day’s short bone,
snarls a mountainside into lavender and green.
In the mind where objects vanish, almost is all.
Element of pitcher, sky, rockface, blank canvas
plastic and vast in one off-center patch.
To copy what’s invisible, to improvise
a soul of things and remake solid life
into fresh anxious unlifelike form.
-W. S. Di Piero, 1995
Why do I think we read this poem in high school? I'm not sure, because I'm pretty sure the poem we read was about a painting by Magritte, not Cézanne. Still--it would've been sophomore year, which was the year my English grade dipped as low as a D due to sheer laziness before I made a desperate scrabble towards mediocrity. I still had to cry in Ms. Kuhl's office to get permission to take A.P. Language the next year--and this is why I don't reminisce about high school. Sophomore year was an especially strange one for me; maybe the only redeeming feature was meeting the best car in the world (oh, I'm sure there were other good things about that year--but my memories are hazy, and one of the big ones involves me breaking my nose).
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