VVG

One wonders if it were the flickering tail of the garret mouse--

That fluttered like the needle who could not find a point

Within the confused compass so jumpily out of joint--

Who sped around the dust and hues of your yellow house.

Or maybe it was the wafting smoke from a teeth-clenched pipe--

That rose like the charmer’s snake from his wicker basket

Or the smoky souls of recent ghosts from out of caskets--

That inspired the agitation of colour in swirls of strife.

Or was it a nameless deep down thing?  Sensation stirred

Upon the last vestige of soul for demand of expression

That scythed and sheaved through the fields of depression?

And above those black and circling swirl of birds

Tell in both sight and of sound even the struggle must die.

This with a fine tuned soul you could both see and hear

Despite the selfless desire to give a slice of an ear,

Amid the waving windy whispers of barley and rye.

For in your portrait, too, those colours of strife swirl round

A sure and steady head with blazing eyes and orange beard

That, like a burning sun, intensified what was feared.

And the same opaque but mutable waves can be found

Where the curling cypress stabs at a storming azure

Sky, a tempest that worked like Jupiter’s little spot,

A convulsive ocean more than merely a tiny dot.

To paint seemed not yet the port nor the final cure.

All is sturm and drang, sure felt within, seen without.

But the tempting need for tameness with a howling hush

Swept upon a surface with a flicker of a bristling brush,

Did simulate the swirling anguish yet brought it about.