32.

Look down in your hands:
Here is the violet, violent sky,
fields of Chinese bombs
in the shape of American bombs
screeching overhead.

33.

Here is the cross
in the shape of a frame,
and the painting that hangs like a body:

her in the shape of her lover,
power in the shape
of power,

among flowers among all the other
pointlessly beautiful things
we’ve seen before.

Sir Godfrey Kneller (English, 1646–1723)

The Chinese Convert, 1687
Oil on canvas

Collection of the Royal Collection