Apollinaire's Death

the Seated Man might have been concealed,
yet his presence was felt
in the rough texture of a simple paradox:

Picasso's self-portrait, another deep enigma, or both.

but the simple seat had barely a leg or two,
and a hat or none at all.

his flat presence like a carpenter's square
full of angles and the sharp thin lines of construction.

many faces or none?

working at Montrouge just before 1919,
the chair master tossed his cubes onto the icy white.

He,  the ultimate magician
with a proud brow and curving smile,
spoke to his friend before the coughing
death in a Paris apartment where poets came to pray.

It was 202, boulevard Saint-Germain-des-Pres at 5PM
when the final silence descended, pulling the unfinished copy
over Apollinaire's head.

He was 38 when he died.

Breton was already at his door, defending the avant-garde.

Cocteau was already on his way out, although he didn't know it.

and upon feeling the sad news when a widow's black veil
touched his cheek, Picasso went to his bathroom mirror and
began to draw.

he drew a lonely man.

nothing was as synthetic as it seemed.