Painting with Bosch in Mind

JACK KRISTIANSEN

    after Pieter Bruegel’s Triumph of Death

“Pieter, what do people need?”

Bosch hovers beside you,
commenting on you work,
agreeing people need to see
the omnipresence of death:

This morning two hounds
running down a naked man;
this afternoon you’ve finished
an emaciated dog
licking the neck of a baby
who may or may not be dead;
the mother, one arm
still circling the child,
lies face down in the dirt.

“Perfect—” Bosch observes,
“that faceless woman,
the ribcage of that cur.
Isn’t it intriguing
how a lingering focus
on the down-to-earth
does as well as the nightmare
of hardworking skeletons
in bringing hell to sight?”

Your day’s work done,
you clean your brushes,
hoping to leave the spirit
of Bosch in your studio
and, oblivious to dying,
pass the winter evening
in the company of your wife,
whom you sometimes need.

Tomorrow the precise work
of an everyday shovel
atop a wagonful of skulls.