I stand and stare at the landscapes;
my eyes darting
from The Olive Trees to the cypress,
from the muted day to The Starry Night.
I have hunted for this moment
in two countries and two states
(three if you count the mushrooms in Amsterdam),
and now my gaze is pulled
from one canvas to the other, repeatedly.
I cannot help but notice
His obvious awareness of the energy’s flow
throughout these views of the world;
the harmonic unity of objects imagined to be separate–
also the kinetic sense of almost inescapable activity
bustling through His evening landscape.
Was He, like me, aware of a spectrum of powers
beyond normal perception?
Was He relating to Theo
the vast mysteries of the night?
The same palette of colors
that seems so gentle and rolling in a grove by daylight
explodes into whirls of magick under the moon;
Each star, an eye of god
radiating its own message of the universe.
Did He hear their cosmic voices,
cut off His ear to hide from their whisperings,
commit and later kill Himself under the weight
of such profound knowledge?….

Christy (standing at my side) says
that there has never been a soundtrack made
for Van Gogh.
I listened to Juno Reactor through my headphones in the Met–
the tribal drums seemed perfect background
for Picasso, Matisse, Rembrandt and Monet
(and even more so for the ancient wonders
of the Egyptian world)–
but as I wandered the exhibits
in His museum overseas
it did indeed seem less-fitting fare.
What instrument plays the music
for His vibrant, mad visions?

And as my eyes are drawn
from star to star to clouds to trees
then down to the village below,
I almost see the window-lights flickering,
the hearth-fires warming the inhabitants.
It seems sometimes that history is like gravity,
pulling one into itself like the center
of a black hole.
(I recall that
back in New York
the immense sarcophagus
carved of black stone
seemed to distort the space around it,
causing me to be lost for a moment
in still, silent sands
centuries away.)
So it is with this scene of Saint-Remy,
enough so that I can hear the wind in the branches
and feel its stir on my skin.

His legacy:
the view He could not shun,
the colors He could not close His eyes to escape,
the sounds He could not slice away,
the impending fate He created
by awaking from dreams
and making history
in oils.