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Monday 30 January 2012

Neil Ellman-

The Treachery of Images

(after the painting by René Magritte)
A pipe is a pipe
we think
or not
we think a pipe
is what it is
or not
or something else
but still a pipe
or not
what we think
it is
a pipe
it is
most clearly is
or not
but clearly not
a hand
or face
we think
it’s not.


The Son of Man

(after the painting by René Magritte)
Even with a bowler hat
red tie and overcoat
he is not who you think he is
or anyone, if anyone or what
an ordinary man
behind an apple-face
the son of man, perhaps,
but not of any god
who won’t reveal his face
or say his name
in so many ways
more like a god than son
if god himself
were the son of man
an ordinary man
in a bowler hat.



Golconda

(after the painting by René Magritte)
Repetitive
like rabid bats
in bowler hats
infest this neighborhood
of thought
anonymous
they hover in our ears
and gather in
the alleyways
and passages
in the crevices
of the brain
twenty, thirty, forty
at a time
the same old ways
the same old men
in bowler hats.


Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey (USA).  He has published numerous poems, many of them ekphrastic, in print and online journals throughout the world.  He is particularly attracted to surreal images and has published separate chapbooks devoted to the works of Dalí and Miró.

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