Still Life with Basket, Still Life with Soup Tureen by Paul Cezanne
Pigments
Still Life with Basket by Paul Cezanne
Front and center
a basket of pears perched precariously on a wooden table
covered in folds of white cloth with loose pears
a china sugar bowl
a cream pitcher tilted at an odd angle with floral designs
a grey ginger pot with almost no surface on which to sit.
The background
right edge, an errant leg from a chair or a table
of unknown origin casting an em dash of a shadow
upper center, the bottom half of a chair
far left, a mahogany table with incoherent items
a cupboard with large gaudy flowers
The colors and hues
the fruit, chlorophyll, anthocyanin, carotene
the cloth, the subtlest dappling of colors to make
a white as pure as the spectrum of light
the basket arched handle and lattice work
the wood glowing with warm buttery golds
How can globs of pasty minerals and oils
concoctions of bipolar mixtures plastered flat
transform two dimensions into three
in a composition so disjointedness
so out of kilter, be so beautiful?
Pigments #2
Still Life with Soup Tureen by Paul Cezanne
Front and center
too-small a basket full of pears and apples
on a table covered with a floral mahogany tablecloth
two pears, at loose ends, or maybe one’s an apple
(that hasn’t found itself yet), a porcelain soup tureen
(that looks like it might have come from Dollar General)
and a black bottle which could contain just about anything
(and don’t you hate bottles that get put in the cabinet unlabeled)
A skimpy French lunch of soup and wine and fruit
The background
a bluish wall with paintings, making them paintings
within a painting, and if one had a painting within it
it would be a painting within a painting within a painting
and wouldn’t that make for some great rhythmical repetition.
One is of a village street, another, two blue discombobulated
birds and the third a mystical green edge which could have
been a blob where green pigment leaked onto the canvas
and had to be edged so it wouldn’t look like a mistake.
The colors and hues
the fruit, carotene, chlorophyll, anthocyanin
the cloth, a rather worn out diatomaceous print
the wall, the splotchy dappling of blues and greys
the pictures, composed with the cheapest pigments
the bowl, simply too small for what it’s there for
The question again
How can globs of pasty minerals and oils
concoctions of polar-opposite chemicals
plastered flat onto a two-dimensional canvas
be transformed into three dimensions
in a composition so off kilter
of such insignificance
be so beautiful?
Cezanne painted hundreds of “Still Lifes” in his life time, each and every one, a miracle of transformation.
The Discerning Woman's Gallery of Verse 
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