Fourteen

Ensor’s mother dealt masks; Longhi’s rhinoceros
across the channel appealed to him, for I saw yesterday
his masked men viewing a tortoise, across the room
his Watteau’s Pierrot and his Delacroix. The grotesque
in masks found in the spirit rituals, players' masks around
Pierrot made to shine in Carnival, where Leonardo
and Daumier used the face for grotesques - Ensor’s
is a spirit ritual of another kind. A grotesque existence,
fitted onto minds that choose it, peering at the animal hoped
to show its essence under its shell. Creeley said
sonnets ‘are highly difficult to use because society
does not offer them a context with which
they are intimate, anymore than society
offers a context for dancing the gavotte.’