Afshan Shafi
After ‘the bedroom at Arles’ by Vincent Van Gogh
Passerby (flickers, briefly, at the canvas):
Great blocks
of sun, pinned together,
black and diligently festering.
(a diligent scouring, a diligent fever?)
the chairs liquid with a dense scatter of flame,
the hexagonal chatter of the light; machetes
churning out the innocent's oil from his cheek.
everything bears the silver of his affliction
the brave ruby of his quilt, a reminder,
to gift more comfort to the laughter of his mind;
the cracked and nostalgic blue of the walls borne of
a neophilia for hacking out
the ore of the enclosed world.
every pore of grain and wool offers its footprint
to his stark , obtruding hands.
the echo of some great iterative darkness, keeping him there
keeping time.
a nagging praise for the sun salt veins of his turret,
angrily mastering each knot of doubt.
The artist is a bright and indignant wraith.
An ungodly pitch of the senses brings him to the golden hilt
of knowing too well, those transparent and raw mornings.
ill-bred and unresponsive , he measures his labour by conscience alone
new and inviolable pressures blow his premise out of water.
The artist (within the canvas)
There is a new song in every gnat and rhesus butterfly.
just watch the song take the body of the woman,
just watch the song take the body of the man.
soon everything will share the balance of the oceans.
limpid symmetries and dissimilar comets smooth
the surface of their chant,
black honesty is what binds us together,
beyond the spell of the deluded princes and their waifs
think. think for a second or two what constitutes your
honour or purpose?
do you let the grey clouds or the voices on the streets decide your temper?
new charlatans pronounce defeat on the other,
new sorrows and infirmities are recorded amongst the mass,
there is only loss here,
a divine gullibility rots the flaming plinth
through and through
and I am somehow
deluded with presentiment.
before I had even picked up my brush,
before I had even walked into the room
this green world was burning,
it had begun to shed the dream
when the first brick was laid
I had only turned my too cautious eye
on the steel of its first etch,
I had only turned my too cautious eye
on the manner in which it engulfed me.