A Readymade Sonnet

Are you a wizard? Practiced in black art?

For art, a thing sublime, you would create

With words, an utterance, your only part:

No palate, brush or paint to mediate.

An ordinary object you espy

And art declare it solemnly to be.

A clever trick to turn a low thing high

By means of nothing more than your decree.

Alas, no magic powers you possess;

So, miserably your incantations fail.

But self-deceived you boldly claim success

And offer the mundane for all to hail.

   

     Your ready-mades the critics may applaud;

     Art lovers call your hocus-pocus fraud.