Cinnabar, Phoenician red, wild geraniumto be played against olive and smoky lime, a mercury luster: quicksilver the soul, most visible in the empty room. Who saw the wicker armchair open like Danae to the cataract of citrus light? Whose coat lies flung across the frame? The Parisian garret window gapes ajar, the bare floor crackles, book lies torqued along its spine, splayed. I dont pretend to know anybody well: people are like shadows to me and I am a shadow. Her job: years in an empty room, to wait. The woman waits, the Master breaks his cloudcover unaccountably, then she stands torqued along her spine, splayed, in plaster rises, an immortal armless Muse turning from him who turns from her. Oh what inquietude: eternal
adieu? Raw sienna,
Paynes gray, Naples yellow: she spins her color wheel, grips her brush. No adieu but to twist in the Masters ever-vanishing embrace, to strike his poses, plead, then lead the long, fevered, scumbled hours alone. Make your harmonies, make your harmonies. Her brush her own. And when the god, exhausted, dies, she reigns already in her vacancy: has rendered from sunset, salmon, ashen-blue, Method: snowdrop in earth the roadthe pink flower We must go on with our mysterious work.