VOICES 5
Monet

Blue Paint

It could have been waterlilies.
It is the stone inside itself.
It is facade without illusion.

What is the terrifying sky
That stands blue back of everything-
A kind of paint.

The Houses
of Parliament

Upon that sky the Houses of Parliament are a crown
Of smoke blue amethyst
Dissolving to dusk. They are man-built stone
Dissolving in dusky water
And air-deep indigo.
Curved inward, they are lifting of themselves
Into the light
And they give way before that sky

The Artist's
Garden at
Veteuil

Even our houses do not hide us.
    In the Garden at Veteuil at 3 o'clock in 1880
    Sunflowers nod above the sand walk and the child
Standing frankly quiet with his hoop
    Where the sun falls between the Chinese jars.
Governess or mother watches from the steps
And withholds.
The broad house stands behind her
As bright ward of what is inside the doors.
It is all there is.
It is the last roof against the bare eternal paint
That the glaze on the jars partakes of.
Enduring blue.

Madame
Monet

We live under the vaulted cold.
We hear nothing
And nothing which is of the world can disturb
The dividing blue. Nevertheless sometimes
Madame under a parasol stands in a high meadow
Where the wind blows blue into her skirts
And blue into a sky full of birds.
She defends us,
And the birds' wings gently rocking around their dome
Assure us that,
Given one another,
The cold blue of heaven need not matter.

Rouen
Cathedral
West Facade

But this is the stone inside itself.
This is facade without illusion.

We built Rouen Cathedral to enter heaven
And it stands in heaven,
Dominating with bare sunlight
All the generations of earth.

We come in silence
But we fade before the cathedral and the light.
They live,
Giving nothing, without need, stone.

And in earliest morning light
Heaven's witness
Stands alone
Painting blue images-
The sky, the facade,
And the pure image of the facade
As they share breath
With the painter.

　

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