Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Untitled Rothko 3

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothing shows through.--Paul Valery

Blackness—like a pit grave in the middle
of the canvas—swallows their failures,
unburdens them of their victims.

Many years of image storms—each might have
been a place to hide—and then his signature
style of clarified silence—
a loneliness washing over flat fields
of sunlit or clouded color.

The painter crouches—brush dripping
on his shoes—
in front of a new world and lets it draw
him in like a breath.
In his ear, the voice of Fra Angelico
whispers, The artist must be a thief
and steal a place for himself
on the rich man’s wall.

Jewel-toned bands of ruby and emerald
like unrolled bolts of seamless cloth—
threads vibrating over the abyss.

Old worlds of woe—in their blood-stained rags—
decompose grain by grain, blown by the wind
until mountains flatten.

If he could stand in the spaces between
losses and still be himself,
if he could find the windy dissonance
between his world and theirs,
if he could keep method from overwhelming
beauty,

they might not look for The Next Big Thing
but become engulfed in the sea
of their own tears.

They might hear Arbeit Mach Frei rising up
from the darkness and find new life—
use a razor to cut ribbons
from a shroud.

John A. Blackard
www.johnablackard.com