Hopper never painted this, but here
on a snaky path his vision lingers:

Three white tombs, robots with glassed-in faces

Before God created people, 
he made animals,
unnamed and marvelous,

The sea churns up a ghost of the Elizabeth,
sunk here in 1850, with the woman
who thought herself half-man when she learned Latin

Some learned the palette is the devil’s platter,
the brush a crucifix: by law, no icons
no graven images “made unto thee.”

Facing wisteria, his eyesight dim,
Monet painted a footbridge over a pond,
dawn, noon, sundown. Seeing only blue,

Subject and maker shed their names, and here
the Met displays that multinominal picture
on a brochure: self-portrait of the artist,

I fix every kind of stab wound, fractured clavicle,
gold teeth sliced out of sleeping mouths for trophy
earrings, all paranoia's graffiti pleading. Doc please

In a sense,
Jack and Manuel were starting over again.
Jack, a Romanian Jew who designed our house, 

In the garden. Sun
on the river
flashing past. I

are all we have. So count them as they pass. They pass 
too quickly 
out of breath. Don’t dwell on the grave which yawns for