Tiger, Surprised: A Sonnet

Written for dVerse Poetics – ‘Launch:
Light and Truth of Painting’. Our host,
Melissa, asks us to write a poem inspired
by one of the works of Henri Rousseau.

Below is the epitaph placed upon Rousseau’s tombstone, written by poet Guillaume Apollinaire and inscribed by sculptor Constantin Brâncusi:

“We salute you Gentle Rousseau you can hear us
Delaunay, his wife, Monsieur Queval and myself
Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven
We will bring you brushes, paints and canvas
That you may spend your sacred leisure in the
light and truth of painting
As you once did my portrait facing the stars, lion and the gypsy”

The grasses bend as one beneath the gale,
a thousand blades combed flat by unseen hands.
The sky has torn itself to strips of pale
white fire, stitched crooked over darkened lands.
And there, half-hidden where the gold stalks lean,
a shape emerges …. orange, black, and bright ….
its mouth pulled back on teeth not fully seen,
its eye a small sun burning through the night.
Is it the storm that makes the creature start,
or does the creature make the storm its own?
The leaves don’t know. They hold their breath, apart,
each vein and rib in perfect stillness shown.
The world tips sideways, wild and unresolved….
one held breath where beast and storm have dissolved.

NAR©2026

This is “Vivaldi Storm” by 2CELLOS

Launch: light and truth of painting

^{Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}