He travels well in Italy,
Commedia Dell’Arte,
seeking never securing
his Columbine, flowered
name, flowered love, but
that’s what makes a love
story, a romance, that
always yearning never
achieving essence of the
emotional
physical
spiritual.
He slips into France and
then England, creating
the pantomine, bursting
upon footlights and fame,
popularity forcing his way
from the streets
to the playhouses and
that changes him, naturally
and unnaturally so that
his DNA is transmitted
by Barrie and Sennett and
Disney to Peter Pan and
Snow White and Cinderella
and even those slapstuck
Keystone Cops and
Keaton and Chaplin.
Chaplin, yes, of course,
especially Chaplin.
Yet I see you
Cezanne Harlequin
and I wonder
at the sadness
of Harlequin, or
the sadness
of Cezanne.
My wife and I spent a long Memorial Day weekend in Chicago. In the Impressionists’ section, the Art Institute was featuring a very small exhibit of Harlequin (1888-1890) by Paul Cezanne, loaned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. If you’re interested in a little of the history of the character of Harlequin, you can read about it at Wikipedia and The History of Pantomine.
This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday, hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems submitted, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.
