Suspend your disbelief. This
Is not a rock, a boulder or a stone
About to drop. Magritte
Is there to fool you into truth,
A kind of truth, trapped in sky,
About to fall. Or perhaps
Not fall but sidle, rise or merely hang,
Hoisting aloft a castle sliding
Where there is no way down.
Its towers cluster, hold the walls,
The rock balloon on which it stands,
Half in sunlight, half in shadow,
Craves our close attention
For it holds what we invent.
What we seek is what we get:
A surface pasted with palette knife,
A stony head with petrified eyes,
Startled, staring east and west,
Sails away, advances on us
Hangs still or lifts as we
Stand on sand outside the frame,
Watch wavelets break and trip and ripple
While the flatlined blue horizon,
Undermining weight above it
Keeps us upright, holds us straight,
Illuminates and violates, said Ernst,
So suspend your disbelief.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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