#557 The Rights of Man (2)

So many internal refer-
ences — that euphonium
on fire; a meteorite, though
not suspended but resting
on the ground; a cloaked
cicerone; the seaside wall.

& that just a sample of what
the nooks & crannies of the
creative mind may contain. 
Not strictly bricolage; more a
selection from what lies be-
hind the world around. Not

often everyday things, but
when they are, are taken out
of context, made fresh. Is
patently obvious that man — 
or woman — has the right to 
ignore copyright should they

choose to do so. Change the
surroundings to new & often 
personal worlds. Replace the
signatures. Call the familiar
by another name. Raise the
bowler hat. Salute the clouds. 

#556 Dawn in the Antipodes

If a statement appears monstrous 
but you do not know that it is false, 
listen, but do not question its vera-
city. What misleads us is the inevit-

ability of connecting the text to the 
drawing. It is not enough that the 
drawing of the pipe so closely re-
sembles a pipe. The letters are but 

the image of letters. Never by word 
or action notice the defects of another — 
naïve handwriting, the absence of any
other trace of the artist's presence. The 

story interrupted at every sentence. It 
reveals discourse's ambiguous power 
to deny. To take any sentence from 
the mouth of another person, before 

he has time to utter it, is the height 
of ill-breeding. To paint is not to af-
firm. Perhaps a swipe of a rag will
soon erase the drawing & the text .

Sources:
This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley

#555 Parmi les Bosquets légers

A final resting place for your loved 
one with maximal light in mind
begins with a fellowship meal pre-
pared by members of the church —
there may even be coffee & cake &
fast reliable bitcoin transactions 
available. It is a hub for learning
amongst local shops, with white 

bottle-brush flowers on bare  
branches in spring & several road-
side attractions nearby creating a
unique composition that offers a
serene & grounding presence. The 
location is perfect. To keep it so, 
machine wash cold with like colors 
on gentle once the event has passed.

#554 Les Deux Soeurs (1925)

The name the same as the
few years earlier de Chirico. 
Different subjects, though the
two pairs have a commonality. 

Both portrayed as if for visual 
merchandising — which is 
what they inherently are. The 
one — the implied mannequins — 

for dresses. The other for acc-
essories, as if for scarves, or 
necklaces. That's the macro 
view. The micro? Two sisters —

are they really? The de Chirico 
pair are differently colored, 
une rouge, une blanc. One 
fairly featureless — bald, eye-



less; the other with hair & 
mask-like features, dark open-
ings that might serve as eyes. 
Enigmatic, like a major part of 

the painter's work, & nothing
sisterly-seeming about them. 
Then the Magritte . . .Closing 
the eyes. As simple an act. That

is what Amiri Baraka wrote 
years later, about a totally
different subject. Are these
sisters? Or could they both

be Magritte's muse, his wife
Georgette? Quite possibly so.
But more simply, a question to 
be asked but never answered.

#553 Le Double Vue

He is standing in front of
a forest. He is wearing a
bowler hat, holding a rose
in his hand. Those aspects
have been used before, but 
not necessarily all three to-
gether. He sees only what 
is in front of him. The other 
is standing behind him, the
forest obscured or, at best,
on the periphery of their vis-
ion. Sees mainly the clothing,
the bowler hat, the coat, e-
nough to recognize who it is 
in front of them. The rose held
up near the right ear they have
never seen before. That is the
aspect they will remember.

#552 The Invisible World

The door left open

offers no way out.

#551 Le Regard Mental (2)

Is said: they don’t build houses now in
the way we remember they did. 

Is said: people involuntarily move 
their eyes when retrieving an image 
from memory. 

Is said: what is that circular object in 
the background — a ceiling light or a
white bowler hat? 

Is said: the mind plays tricks, but that
looks like Mr. Behoover & his Hung-
arian friend close by the object. 

Is said: they’re so small, which means,
even allowing for perspective, the house 
in the foreground must be enormous.

Is said: the mind’s gaze defaults to
a masculine paradigm.

#550 Le Regard Mental

Look at 
the build-
                 ing. Think. How do I
                 reach the roof? & which 
                                                         roof should
                                                         I aim for? & 
                  if I do 
                  reach 
               a roof, will the entire 
               structure remain up-
               right or will it tumble 
                                                      over
                                                      once 
                                my weight threatens 
                                to send it off balance? 
                                Houses upon houses
                                in this one spot. How 
     is the rest of the street likely to look?

#549 La Voie Royale

Once more the war; though
now it seems some joy has
been permitted to infiltrate
the outlook. The Wehrmacht 
turned back at Stalingrad, 
enough of a setback to pre-
tend a beginning to an end.
Hope springs eternal wrote
the poet Pope, & the kings —
though fewer of them around
these days — string along by 
opening the kingsways up to 
celebration. No fireworks —
gunpowder is strictly mili-
tary matériel in times of war — 
but the dead are plentiful, as
are the flowers that feed on
them. Picked, & thrown in
to the air; &, from a certain 
perspective, not quite golden 
apples but, in times of scarcity,
perhaps the next best thing.

#548 La leçon d'anatomie (1943)

In Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson 
all is dark — the lecturer, the
onlookers who look too old
to be students, who are in fact
doctors who've paid to be in the 
painting, the cadaver over which
Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is carrying
out an explanation of the musc-

ulature of the human arm. One
public dissection permitted each
year, held in a theater as if it were
a play, with a paying audience, 
the body to be that of a convicted 
criminal who has been executed.

In Magritte's painting, it is the ab-
sence of dark that marks its pre-
sence. A war is being fought; but
rather than depict that, the painter 
channels Renoir to let bright light 
enter. A landscape in a vase, trees 
in flower, color. An attitudinal turn-
around, the visible made invisible.

Recently published

Mark Young
The Magritte Poems
Sandy Press
ISBN: 979-8-9898666-3-2
Amazon URL: https://a.co/d/65ZzzPr
648 pages
Paperback: $US24.99
Kindle: $US12.00

This is a book 21 years in the making. The first Series Magritte poem — three words, three lines — was composed on the front step of a motel room at Yarra Glen, about 50 kilometers from Melbourne. It appeared on the As/Is blog in — I think — November 2003, was followed by another twenty or so at the same blog, & then, in March 2004, the following post appeared at my then main blog, Pelican Dreaming:

I have decided to start a blog for my Series Magritte poems. The URL is https://seriesmagritte.blogspot.com.

As I write this, there are 547 poems up at Series Magritte. I have included all of them in this book. Interspersed among them are a number of other poems — the Florence Foucault centos, composed of extracts from Michel Foucault's book on Magritte, This Is Not a Pipe, & the 1860 The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, by Florence Hartley, some of which actually appeared under the pseudonym of Florence Foucault, & also included are other of my poems that reference Magritte, including one that dates back to 1974. My admiration for René Magritte goes back a long way!

This is a collected, not a selected, so it may be uneven in quality. I would also have liked to include some of the Magritte paintings that inspired the poems, but that would undoubtedly have raised copyright issues as well as ending up as a seriously expensive tome. I have no intention of stopping writing Magritte poems, but I've decided to bring a dotted line to the venture so that I can see what it looks & feels like in book form. For those that don’t like the heft of such things, there is also a Kindle edition which Amazon warns may take a while to download.

I want to thank Javant Biarujia for his introduction, which is up at Sandy Press, & Sheila E. Murphy for her blurb which can be found on the Amazon page. Their words are more than I deserve.

I also want to thank Bill Allegrezza & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen for publishing earlier selections of my Magritte poems. I want to thank harry k stammer for publishing this collection & for doing the covers of some of the aforementioned smaller books. Lastly, I'd like to pay tribute to René Magritte for making the invisible visible.