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 	STUDYING THE SUNFLOWER

An average encyclopedia will tell you at a look
That this is a large plant of the daisy group,
Its seeds contain an oil thought beneficial;
And under the sharper scrutiny of the microscope
And scalpel, we reveal the hidden structure of the flower:
The petals, shape of cells and form of seed give hope
That botany brings nature in our power
To know what's hidden in the universe - but science is superficial.
There is a third way-and the hardest by the hour;
For this you need a straw hat and a stool,
A pipe of maize and many days before the flower,
A mind that fears not to be thought a fool:
Paint, canvass and a mind unhinged to vision
Reveal the universe entire not  plant's division.



VINCENT

Under the splitting lintel of a rotting house
I stay in company with a lonely mouse
While age sits over us like a ruffled crow,
Unable to resolve to stay in here or go.
The sunflowers in the garden do not speak
Although I know that in the sun they know
The answers to my questions, but their vow
Is silence-only the dumb mouse will squeak.

The sun is golden over fields of wheat
And skies burn brazen in the summer heat,
The vision is distorted in the haze
Of summer, making all of life a maze.
And I shall ponder all this summer long:
Record on canvas the perplexity and pain
Till through paint's torment all shall become plain
That never was a problem to the strong.

The weak climb cliffs of nightmare every day
And go in fear where innocent children play
To find in doubt and fear their only strength:
The strong come only to their weaknesses at length.
Peace never could in summer gardens grow,
But in the gardens of my canvases,
Where sky and sunflower fill the mind's crevasses
Peace shall eventually come dropping slow.



	ODYSSEY

The pattern of the leaf is delicate
And glistens in relief beneath the rain.
Because the patterns of my life are intricate
I know this moment will not come again.
Beneath spring rain what revelation comes
To water the dull thoughts of a dry brain?
What knowledge of our loss and of our gain
Prepares us for the lucid scrutiny of summer suns?

The sunflower unfolds its beauty summer long
And gives an image to the searching mind:
Vincent's one touchstone when his mind was wrong,
That helped him stay a member of mankind.
Truth would evade him, sometimes reason too,
But in creating patterns from his soul
He reached out at his own unreached for goal
And found his way out of the human zoo.

If I must stay what I am now for good:
An animal that's lost inside a maze
That has no pattern inside a darkening wood,
It is no wonder if my mind is crazed.
Did Circe or their stomachs make men swine?
Does distance from enchantment make it fail?
Outside the maze do ordered paths prevail
Or even there are we blind, blundering kine?

Artist and traveller seek one Penelope
And in her quest the roads to freedom roam,
But truth and freedom demand synecdoche
Or else in stumbling we shall not come home.
Art is a synthesis of timelessness with time
As tree and leaf make form from random cells
The dance of verse makes heaven from private hells
And frees the body from the beast through rhyme.

The pattern of the leaf is delicate
And glistens in relief beneath the rain,
Because the patterns of my life are intricate
I know this moment will not come again.
But now is fixed forever, though no more
Beyond my time, for better or for worse
And though I now may bless it or may curse
I cannot touch it through time's bolted door.




THE CHAIR

Vincent's picture of a wooden chair
With a seat of rushes and a crouching man
Epitomises more despair
Than grammar's formal apparatus can.

An inarticulate deep grief communicates
Through yellow tones on canvases
The tortured gap of broken mind's crevasses
Where logic at -most lucid only hesitates.

The excrement of human pain is foul
And will not let us do the good we would;
And while the rest of us can only howl

There are a few redeem the human mud,
By proving that beneath the mire the soul
Still purifies the breath and warms the blood.





LANDSCAPE NEAR ARLES

Lonelier than ever now
He painted in a frenzy to escape 
The demons which pursued him from within. 
Unhinged to vision by his grief,
Paint was his only real relief .
.
He plastered analgesic layers
In ever thicker brushstrokes but in vain:
His inner turmoil somehow caused
The landscape to distort and writhe
Like something unwillingly alive.

The landscape would not keep still
Under the shimmering southern heat
Which sapped the spirit and the will.
The cornfield crows cawed out, 'Defeat.' 
Only the sunflowers whispered, 'Hope.'

Peace might come dropping from a starry night
When in the empty streets he could look up
And see eternity in cool points of light
From a deep blue sky ablaze with stars
Or in the glowing bars see joy in life.

Soon he would leave this landscape and this heat
For the eternal stillness of the ordered garden,
Whose fountain guards the secret rose of peace,
Whose borders mark a final end to pain
And all the angry voices have to cease.



VINCENT AT SAINT-REMY.

Doctor Charcot tried in vain
To heal the Dutchman but the pain
Imprisoning his soul would not
Let love enter with a healing hand.

Only the Doctor's portrait stands
A silent testament to Vincent's hands
Which struggled to transform a mind's distress
And make a blessing out of ugliness.

Suddenly both pain and painting ceased
The black crows cawed, 'Despair, despair!'
The world you paint cannot be there 
And those creating  hands were his destroyers.






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