the painting

findings and forgotten heartbreaks amid sun drenched pages of art at the national library. blessed

If only my sun had shone at night.
I sleep - steeped in colours,
In a bed of paintings,
Your foot in my mouth
Presses me, tortures me.

I wake up in pain
Of a new day, with hope
Not yet painted,
Not yet daubed with paint.

I run up
To my dry brushes,
And I'm crucified like Jesus,
With nails pounded in the easel.

Am I finished?
Is my picture done?
Everything shiens, flows, runs.

Stop, one more daub,
Over there - black paint,
Here - red, blue, spread out,
Calmed me.

Can you hear me - my dead bed,
My dry grass,
My departed love,
My new come love,
Listen to me.

I move over your soul,
Over your belly -
I drink the calm of your years.

I swallowed your moon
The dream of your innocence,
To become your angel,
To watch you as before.

Marc Chagall

in me.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come to
mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says,
"There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side.
She is just as able to bear her load
of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
"There, she is gone!"
there are other eyes watching her coming
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,
"Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

—Henry van Dyke