VINCENT, ARLES, 1888

 In white suit and straw hat

a man is walking toward the sunset

(deep red now)

Just finished his toil of painting

an almond tree in blossom,

a fiery lavender field

and the backside of a horse.

Time-worn and toothless,

lovelorn and broody,

his mind seething with images

of naked women and Zola books.

He talks to the beetles about memories

 of himself in other life and other souls.

He smokes a black pipe and his nostrils

 sip the scent of rosemary, fennel and thyme,

"Everyone is afraid of me"

-says the man to the beetles, to himself 

walking towards a bluish horizon.

 Crows, in haste, like shooting stars.

A gypsy caravan passes by to the sea

in merry pilgrimage to venerate Sarah

in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.

 Guitars, bonfires, roses, wild dances.

They ignore the red hair man now drawing

the bluish horizon, the shooting stars,

all in the highest yellow note.

"I am alone on an endless 

and yellow sea"-says the man

to himself            to the crows.

THE FALL

 

Mother-naked I fell down from a star

(flickering speck in a flickering void)

I had no choice.

I fell down into my soul

like the splash of Icarus

onto the sea.

A DREAM

  

Sylvia Plath yodels at Primrose Hill.

Winter whitening the sky 

                                            her face 

 bundled up with a black cashmere coat

a black velvet skirt.

Her red white-spotted bandana is

 the only burst of sunshine 

                                             so far in the year.

Her aquamarine sweater: the only blue 

she has relished for months.

The yodelling pierces 

some violet clouds. 

A wayward blackbird alights 

on the hood of the stroller 

where little Frieda snoozes. 

"Maybe is my father's soul

Maybe the blackbird only exists

 in the baby's dream"

She yodels and yodels to the dusk

 holding court with a big murder of crows.

Frieda wakes up and chuckles

 and her tiny hands catch 

the last iridescent beam

of Mommy's smile.

THE SWALLOW

 

I consulted the entrails of a swallow

still alive and fluttering,

and shuffled the cards of God:

always turned up the Fool.

I didn't see anything in the prismal

heart of the swallow flying to the sun.

No future like a diamond. No love

like the smell of sweetgrass. No glory

in the shape of laurel crown.

The swallow finally blended

into the dusky horizon.

I reshuffled the cards of God:

 always turned up the Fool.

KATABASIS

Daisy-like and dazzled

by the last ray of hope

Eurydice turned back

not from the underground

but the underworld.

She was alone and beaming.

Orpheus just decided to remain

down in the realm of darkness

dancing and playing the lute.

WORTHING, 1894

 

A cloudburst loomed over the Worthing seaside, 

and he puffed curls of blue smoke

from his Parascho cigarette to the leaden sky. 

Snazzy and just arrived from London, 

jolly like a maypole. He clocked himself hearing

 his own name—ghostly—from the pier:

Oscar! Oscar!

He believed himself seeing Ganymede 

conjured up by the scented smoke. 

The most beautiful effete ever, cupbearer of Gods.

A breeze of lust wafted through the green carnation 

glowing on his lapel.

Though it was not his name that resonated

 all over the sea, but the wind soughing 

through a seagull's skeleton.

THE PEBBLE

You touched a pebble

that rested for ages and ages

dreaming of being the moon

*

(Beneath the pebble a cricket

 rehearsed a fugue

 to the starry night.)

*

The pebble on your hand

 was lighter than the weight

 of a hummingbird in the air 

the weight of the truth

 in some lips.