A room in Arles, walls painted yellow,
yellow for faith and love,
for a newly discovered self
stripped to the waist
in the torrid cicada heat,
the chatter of wings rubbing together
as Vincent with a brush dipped in mauve
fading to grey,
mauve for hope
and grey for intelligence, considers painting
a self-portrait, a grey undercoat for the way
it largesses the mind with jars of glistening fruit
and bridges x’d with sacrifice,
crossings he’d made near Antibes
where light slithers along brackish channels
winding south across les Salins,
the great salt plains where a man can disappear
overnight, just evaporate
like standing water. This story
told about Poseidon, earth shaker
and tamer of wild horses; how he rose
storm-faced from the sea in a chariot
pulled by brine-soaked steeds, grey and dappled
like the horses of the Camargue, the mythical ones
women ride in dreams. Perhaps
he should paint a woman dying a red cloth
dipped five times in madder root
and meadowsweet mixed with oak galls and graith
to set the color, the way red,
red for passion, burns when mixed
with chrome yellow
and he remembers a miner in the Borinage
caught in a fire that scarred his forehead
with a crown of thorns, mouth
fitted with a wooden tongue.
He will paint how worn misshapen shoes today
With a brush dipped in burnt umber,
brown the color of service to others.