![Paul Klee, Zerstörung und Hoffnung [Destruction and Hope], 1916 (MOMA).
Tom Paulin’s “Klee/Clover”:
Nightwatch after nightwatch
Paul Klee endured
“horribly boring guard duty”
at the gasoline cellar
and every morning
outside the Zeppelin hangar
there was drill then a speech
tacked with junk formulas
he varnished wings
and stencilled numbers
next to gothic insignia
a private first-class
with a lippy dislike
of their royal majesties
and Flying School 5 (Bavaria)
he wrote home to Lilyit’s nice this spring weather
and now we’ve laid out a garden
between the second and third runways
the airfield’s becoming
more and more beautiful
each time a plane crashed
- and that happened quite often
he cut squares of canvas
from the wings and fuselage
he never said why
but every smashed biplane
looked daft or ridiculous
half-joky and untrue
- maybe the pilots annoyed him?
those unlovely aristos
who never knew they were flying
primed blank canvases
onto his beautiful airfield](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrpba68hxq1qb9yj1o1_1280.jpg)
Paul Klee, Zerstörung und Hoffnung [Destruction and Hope], 1916 (MOMA).
Tom Paulin’s “Klee/Clover”:
Nightwatch after nightwatch
Paul Klee endured
“horribly boring guard duty”
at the gasoline cellar
and every morning
outside the Zeppelin hangar
there was drill then a speech
tacked with junk formulas
he varnished wings
and stencilled numbers
next to gothic insignia
a private first-class
with a lippy dislike
of their royal majesties
and Flying School 5 (Bavaria)he wrote home to Lily
it’s nice this spring weather
and now we’ve laid out a garden
between the second and third runways
the airfield’s becoming
more and more beautifuleach time a plane crashed
- and that happened quite often
he cut squares of canvas
from the wings and fuselage
he never said why
but every smashed biplane
looked daft or ridiculous
half-joky and untrue
- maybe the pilots annoyed him?
those unlovely aristos
who never knew they were flying
primed blank canvases
onto his beautiful airfield
