Rothko’s Black by Maurya Simon

The painting glows savagely, calmly, and the world floats off in a square, flat discus, then reappears as a thunderstorm viewed from a canvas window. Such darkness calls to us from beyond the body’s ocean; it calls to us from the other side of love, where we ghost through looking glass faces. For here’s a blackness of sound deep as a baritone’s silence, and tuned to the key of Self. We’re black boats now, black sails, oars. We begin to row back and forth from lighthouse to lighthouse. From “Days of Awe” (Copper Canyon Press: $9, paper; 86 pp.). Simon was born in New York, grew up in California and Europe. This is her second published collection of poetry. She teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and lives with her husband and two daughters on Mt. Baldy. 1989, Maurya Simon. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.