@3Hurry! Hurry!@1 Flames pour from the cottage window. The plane goes down to sea, and like a pelican scoops up a beakful of water, returns to the burning vision of a crucifixion which smells of the artist's linseed oil and the trapped mistress, his muse, who lives in his throat, content never to come out. I watch the pilot pour water into the artist's mouth and eyes, and through his red roof. Yellow fire eats the edges of his yard. The priest has come and is waving a giant candle at the anger of the artist in his spilled moonlight. Here too, an old peasant woman with nothing to hide and her junk cart, has brought sacks full of dead birds and rotten apples in the name of his color zone, as he requested but no longer needs. As I leave him, the artist is beating his way across the hillside with fire and smoke swimming from the rear of his musty brown suit. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO A MOUSE, ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH by ROBERT BURNS FROM THE IONIAN ISLANDS by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES ODE (MUSIC-MAKERS) by ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O'SHAUGHNESSY CANADA by CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS TO HELEN KELLER by FRANCES BEEBE MISERABLE NIGHT by AVENELLE WILMETH BLAIR STOKLEWATH; OR, THE CUMBRIAN VILLAGE by SUSANNA BLAMIRE SECTION GANG: DAYBREAK by NORMAN BOLKER TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY MEMORY OF THE FAIREST AND MOST VIRTUOUS LADY by WILLIAM BOSWORTH |