Vincent’s Day

Yellow, the color of morning, bathes the sower  

In resplendent light, the field shimmering  

Golden impasto, wheat and sunflowers flaring, 

Swarmed by crows above, blue sky imminent, 

A road meandering through the straw-flames, 

Evoking a question we must ask ourselves, 

Is it leading somewhere, or nowhere at all? 

 

On the other side of town, in the afternoon, 

A family hunches over a table together, 

Poor, dirty, crowded, tired from another day 

Working in the fields, their bulbous anatomy 

Blackened by labor, like the potatoes they eat, 

Portraits of their relatives hanging on the walls,  

A museum of peasantry cast by strokes of love. 

 

Later that night, in a city nearby, on a café terrace 

Close to the Rhone, the view from a bedroom shows 
Swirling nightscapes rolling like waves over a steeple, 
The light from heavenly bodies reflecting pillars 
Off the river, in broken trails leading to Dreamland, 
Where the artist makes his home, surrendering himself 
To madness, his yearning to return there seen in his paint.