This Poem was Submitted By: Doug Shy On Date: 2002-01-16 12:10:08 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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On Three Paintings of Van Gogh

he is always near a field. a field with two rabbits or fields within fields, a cow, perhaps, his bedroom a dutchwoman some fruit (as a respite) but always, nearby, the fields, and a town near the fields has a road, and its back to the tyrant disguised as a mountain (a wave) Les Alpilles there is peace but if one should see they will sound the monster cry and scurry as it threatens as only the water made stone feigning water could threaten to wash over the world and the road and the town and the fields, where the ploughman  has bled the ground red with his toil where his ox pauses hulking to test the amber stalks and to fill his raggedy mulching jaws giant with the blood-stained corn stubble (from the poor ploughman’s toil) and then regains an animal smile that outranks the yoke for a moment and gives rise to (so unproper) oxen-dreaming visions of wheat, endless golden fields of it tumbling around cypress  in the early harvest afternoon and alas!  the watermountain has finally conquered and broken its cold stone over the village the sky is possessed with it awash with it has given itself up to the turquoise and foam and is dancing! and the mountainwatersky forsaking its monstering keeps a thousand of its eyes on the careful wheat below which is   worshipping in its keeper’s benevolent frenzy, and the earth is alive in the rollicking blueness of the sky and the whispering goldness of the wheat and the drifting and endless fields.

Copyright © January 2002 Doug Shy

Additional Notes:
This is based on these three Van Gogh Paintings, which I found on: http://www.econsultant.com/gogogh Les Alpilles, Mountainous Landscape near Saint-Rémy Valley with Ploughman Seen from Above Wheat Field with Cypresses at the Haute Galline Near Eygalieres the last is one of my all time favorites. love that wheat.


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