The famished ermine trimming the patrician’s coat 
		was meant as an emblem of wealth.

					     	         Is this the real-time sorrow
and how did Beurer bring it out on the patron’s face
     				through brumal medieval afternoons
						when they sit near each other
as still as two lemons,
	          fire thinned,
		     	the stubborn paint thickening like an adolescent’s neck.

	Licking a brush, the painter brings in a worker		
			              from the farmyard below the window sill
where Rückingen rests his hand, the jewel in his ring
	     					pushing out of the canvas.

    			 What is the life of a poor man, the least
		bit lit at the tip of a stick 
                of incense,
	whose name isn’t on the frame’s plate, his knee 
cocked, who leans over a wall, stares 
at a ruin on the horizon; fly-sized,
						both man and castle.

		He’s supposed to be raking, but his mind is paralyzed,
	like a cart’s wheel half-sunk in mud.        
                                                       Is it his illness,
	     unidentified, or the antique disaster of his father’s
maiming, or another, more general trouble
                                                                       too great to contain in one
		homunculus,
			undulating invisibly over the expanse, dormant fields 
backed by foothills,
		then the inexorable elevations, each layer
	    		 colder and darker, of blue.