Cezanne Squared by Deborah Guzzi

Cezanne Squared
– Atelier Cezanne Aix en Provence
 
Hidden behind high walls, Cezanne became;
his eyes clamped to a stretched canvas frame
for substance began where his vision ended.
 
Bottles—of red wine, ripe fruit—in a bowl,
set his horizontal stage, when indoors.
Circle and cylinder shapes; he explored,
then the square—boxed-in for days untold.
 
All of life reduced to its core, dissected,
each plane a screen, a bizarre dream upended.
Each petite mort reflected, then resurrected
 
as earth turned beneath a Provencal sun,
seared sharp by a pallet-knife’s flexible blade,
bounced back from a titian-blue the sky was arrayed,
and the edges of nature were redone.
 
Disheveled, and gaunt often times shunned,
he toiled outcaste not a part of the charade;
the worth of his work out-staged, underplayed,
but, ah the days, and the light of the sun.
 
Driven geometrical, his synapses flamed;
the angles positioned; the curve unstrained.
The hues clean, scraped, scratched, falling forward.
 
Analogs tumbled; his third eye took a toll.
He shied from contact which gave no succor,
but the layers, the layers of paint, he adored.
How the brush, the knife and the paint consoled.
 
With a knitted brow and a too soon bald pate
a lone wolf grew beneath Picasso’s gaze
fathering Cubism with the art he created.
 
 Deborah Guzzi
First Published Voices de la Luna Oct. 19, 2015