“What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream.”  ~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

This stunning performance on the harp by Lavinia Meijer, of Metamorphosis II by Philip Glass, plus a lovely violin and guitar duo make a perfect accompaniment for my poetry on the subject. I hope you enjoy the music, the prose and the paintings!

‘Metamorphosis’

What is this force that draws me, inexorably towards you?

The Earth’s four seasons, unfaltering, come and go,

Red, orange and yellow foliage now proliferates,

Love, like burnt leaves, clings precariously,

To rustic boughs; fearing annihilation from the gusts of life.

Pompeo Mariani – Autunno

Thoughts and feelings transmute like the elements,

Hot for a time, cold the next, perhaps even icy…

But passions warm like a glorious autumn day,

Lighting up your life while they burn and glow; evolution

Is inevitable, yet the heart yearns for what has passed.

The Stone Bench in the Garden at Saint-Paul Hospital by Vincent van Gogh

Learning to embrace the wisdom of changing seasons;

Both life and death. All effort against nature is futile,

Souls are forged within molecular metamorphosis,

Dipping in and out of an infinite, primordial panoply,

Merging with other souls, individual but connected.

Apple Picking at Eragny sur Epte c. 1888 by Camille Pissarro

The concertina caterpillar chews quietly on his leaf,

Unremarkable on the surface, evolving inside his chrysalis,

Hidden from the world, he is overtaken by energy,

Emerging from his self-imposed cocoon transfigured,

All of life is metamorphosis, an explosion of alteration.

Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue by Dosso Dossi circa late 16th Century

The new butterfly tests his dynamic, vibrant wings,

Fluttering to and from the sweet scent of flowers,

Thus an old heart may beat to a new tune,

But it remembers the shared music of before,

Where unforgotten melodies are woven into DNA.

Autumn Leaves by Sir John Everett Millais

A new phase, a new masterpiece will be written,

As the trees release their golden halos, ready

For preordained progression, so it is with spirit.

The journey of metamorphosis and rebirth carries us

To infinity, where we are ever the same – yet different.

~ By Virginia Burges

Autumn c. 1904 by Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933).

Philip Glass on the piano playing his Metamorphosis IV and V:

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” ~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis