VINCENT

By: Victoria G. Smith

 

Your burning gaze shames us: we, who
are stripped bare by the purity of your pain.
Your torment haunts us across time—
we don’t see the color of our souls
in the brushstrokes of our lives.
You are conscience screaming,
tearing at straitjacket.
You are lover pining, dying
from unrequited love.
I can’t bear to look at you anymore, Vincent.
Thus, I bury my eyes in sunflower fields.

Poet’s Notes: As summer ends and autumn begins, a friend continues to post happy pictures of his European vacation with snapshots of him wearing a jacket, the Eiffel in the background. The cooler days have begun to turn the waxy green leaves of one of my rhododendrons into the russet beginnings of a burning bush. These should inspire me with gilded visions of the riot of fall colors that will soon envelop us here in the American Midwest, but what I am seized with, instead, is the memory of those luscious sunflower fields on the road to Monet’s house. Which in turn remind me of Van Gogh and his obsessive paintings of sunflowers, of course—sunflowers in clay pots, sunflowers in the Arles countryside, happy sunflowers in a blue, sad room, dying sunflowers against a cheerful yellow wall. Has anyone else paid more homage to an otherwise humble flower?

When I see flowers, I see the most selfless life form: They live only for our pleasure. And then they die. Just like great artists as Van Gogh. He tried to make people see the grand beauty in the simplest things, the glorious halo-like vibrations of light, the shapes of the wind—and yet all they saw was a deranged, penniless man. And now his pictures are a rich man’s ransom.

In hard economic times, we shed off luxury and focus on what’s essential— which we almost always erroneously equate with what the body needs, forgetting that beauty and truth are just as essential to the human soul. And that’s why patronage of the arts is the first to go. Just imagine if Van Gogh did not have to worry about how to get his next meal, where to get the last piece of coal for his stove, losing the financial support of his brother and the patronage of his friends. Imagine what other great masterpieces he could have still created that we might feast upon today! This alone speaks the last word on why society needs to fund and support its artists, and what a great service patrons of the arts are doing for mankind. Instead, deep down, many of us still think that art is an expendable luxury, that artists are basically loons, and that writers should write for free. A distinguished fellow poet, far more accomplished than I am, has railed against the latter in a provocative essay, and I am beginning to see that he is right. For now, I will be content with a few words of gratitude from my readers. Let’s see how many we get: Do please “like” my Facebook author page, Author Victoria G. Smith, and follow me on Twitter @authorvgsmith. (Copyright © 2015 by Victoria G. Smith)