Van Gogh wrote to Theo from Arles:
"I must also have a starry night with cypresses,
or perhaps surmounting a field of ripe corn..."
Over which meteors would streak--
past Mercury, golden as a corn kernel,
and the Dog Star, haloed in blue--
to set the farm dogs barking.
The cypress, as he knew, is the oldest
variety of graveyard tree, cultivated
in Hell by Persephone herself ( a former
corn goddess) beside the bottomless
pools from which the spirits drink
deeply and are never satisfied.
Cypresses lined the Public Garden
at Arles where Van Gogh depicted them
vividly in blue, with silver highlights.
He liked to work there all afternoon,
munching a loaf of corn bread,
and then to doze until nightfall,
among flowers, on the hard benches.
When he painted his small room
on the other side of town, the bed
of cypress wood-- lit up yellow
as the sun-- dominated the canvas.
"I am in a continual fever of work,"
he wrote, completing five paintings in
five days. A year later, he shot himself
and was buried in a cypress coffin
in a cemetery between two cornfields
where the gravestones are visible
only in winter when the ground is bare.
Where the dogs, with frozen breath,
bay beneath iron trees
at the yellow moon that fills the sky.
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this is a clip from Nicholas Christopher's book 5 Degrees and other poems, part 9 of the 35 part "5 Degrees" which talks about Van Gogh and Houdini at length and contains some of Christopher's recurring themes (iron, lapis, stars, snow)
I don't quote poetry to seem intelligent; I don't know much, I just really like some, particularly Christopher's with its strong imagery and storytelling.
"I must also have a starry night with cypresses,
or perhaps surmounting a field of ripe corn..."
Over which meteors would streak--
past Mercury, golden as a corn kernel,
and the Dog Star, haloed in blue--
to set the farm dogs barking.
The cypress, as he knew, is the oldest
variety of graveyard tree, cultivated
in Hell by Persephone herself ( a former
corn goddess) beside the bottomless
pools from which the spirits drink
deeply and are never satisfied.
Cypresses lined the Public Garden
at Arles where Van Gogh depicted them
vividly in blue, with silver highlights.
He liked to work there all afternoon,
munching a loaf of corn bread,
and then to doze until nightfall,
among flowers, on the hard benches.
When he painted his small room
on the other side of town, the bed
of cypress wood-- lit up yellow
as the sun-- dominated the canvas.
"I am in a continual fever of work,"
he wrote, completing five paintings in
five days. A year later, he shot himself
and was buried in a cypress coffin
in a cemetery between two cornfields
where the gravestones are visible
only in winter when the ground is bare.
Where the dogs, with frozen breath,
bay beneath iron trees
at the yellow moon that fills the sky.
------------------------------------------
this is a clip from Nicholas Christopher's book 5 Degrees and other poems, part 9 of the 35 part "5 Degrees" which talks about Van Gogh and Houdini at length and contains some of Christopher's recurring themes (iron, lapis, stars, snow)
I don't quote poetry to seem intelligent; I don't know much, I just really like some, particularly Christopher's with its strong imagery and storytelling.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
My other grammatical pet peeve is when people say "whom" when they mean "who." Not coincidentally, I think they do that because they're trying to sound smart!