FALLING...

“Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion; what's in a name?” - Helen Hunt Jackson
 

“The Moth and the Lamp” by Cesar Santos (detail above) is this week’s visual stimulus for Magpie Tales’ followers who take the challenge to verbally create a suitable response.

The artist, Cesar Santos, (b. 1982) is a  Cuban-American. His art education is worldly, and his work has been seen around the globe, from the Annigoni Museum in Italy, the Beijing museum in China to Chelsea NY. Santos studied at Miami Dade College, where he earned his associate in arts degree in 2003. He then attended the New World School of the Arts before travelling to Florence, Italy. In 2006, he completed the “Fundamental Program in Drawing and Painting” at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, studying under Michael John Angel, who was a student of artist Pietro Annigoni.
 

Santos’ work reflects both classical and modern interpretations juxtaposed within one painting. His influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Modernism. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic.
 

Among Santos’ solo shows are “Paisajes y Retratos” in the National Gallery in San Jose, Costa Rica; “Syncretism” in the Eleanor Ettinger Chelsea Gallery in New York; “Beyond Realism” with Oxenberg Fine Arts in Miami and “New Impressions” in the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio, among many others>

The artist has received numerous accolades, including first place in a Metropolitan Museum of Art competition. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America, including the Frost Art Museum in Miami, the Villa Bardini Museum in Florence and the National Gallery in Costa Rica (from his website).
 

Here is my offering:
 

Falling in Love
 

Your mouth, a flower,
A sweet flower full of nectar.
Your mouth a trap, a spider sitting on its web.
A spider waiting for a victim –
And I, a weak incautious butterfly
That flies, hovers and falls
Into your fatal mesh.
 

Your eyes, as double suns shine,
Transmitting rays of light effulgent,
Attracting me to their deadly fires.
The suns hot and indifferent,
And I, a moth, helpless, impotent
Who flies there itself to immolate,
Without alternative or choice.
 

Your arms, fresh branches
Of the greenwood tree;
They seem benign, innocent.
Your hands offer caresses
But in the end mete out death.
A little sparrow I, fly into the darkness,

Only to perish immobile in your birdlime.