1 <br /> <br />These seven houses have learned to face one another, <br />But not at the expected angles. Those silly brown lumps, <br />That are probably meant for hills and not other houses, <br />After ages of being themselves, though naturally slow, <br />Are learning to be exclusive without offending. <br />The arches and entrances (down to the right out of sight) <br />Have mastered the lesson of remaining closed. <br />And even the skies keep a certain understandable distance, <br />For these are the houses of the very rich. <br /> <br />2 <br /> <br /> <br />One sees their children playing with leopards, tamed <br />At great cost, or perhaps it is only other children, <br />For none of these objects is anything more than a spot, <br />And perhaps there are not any children but only leopards <br />Playing with leopards, and perhaps there are only the spots. <br />And the little maids that hang from the windows like tongues, <br />Calling the children in, admiring the leopards, <br />Are the dashes a child might represent motion by means of, <br />Or dazzlement possibly, the brilliance of solid-gold houses. <br /> <br />3 <br /> <br /> <br />The clouds resemble those empty balloons in cartoons <br />Which approximate silence. These clouds, if clouds they are <br />(And not the smoke from the seven aspiring chimneys), <br />The more one studies them the more it appears <br />They too have expressions. One might almost say <br />They have their habits, their wrong opinions, that their <br />Impassivity masks an essentially lovable foolishness, <br />And they will be given names by those who live under them <br />Not public like mountains’ but private like companions’.<br /><br />Donald Justice<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-a-painting-by-patient-b-of-the-independence-state-hospital-for-the-insane/
