What Fiery Eye, by John Milton

The font of crisis or sensation

on whose jet this lark borne

upward rests teetering

over a wheatfield has long since

subsided, a figment of memory &

weather.

As if on a double-dare, a wish

for serenity rather than for

strangeness, Van Gogh went

south, following the dream

of a well-tempered temperament

produced he thought by

steady heat, wind, the cicada

shivering somewhere out of sight.

Painting infinity, whatever

dies because it is not dying

beneath the sun--iris, herds

of corn, wheat, the flat

horizons of Le Crau

which like a great technique

at once suggest & betray all

hope for a beyond--he saw too

clearly.

High-minded, lonely, after 6

months forestalling company &

repose, he refashioned himself

for Gaughin as a Japanese

monk in whose pressed features

& close-shaven head uncanniness

vies with shame.

A 37 having suffered all

over again the dispersion

of spring, autumns

fogged by misgivings in another

climate, he wrote his

brother a last time in fatigue:

“But what do you want?”

Not a house, nor a garden; not

children. Opportunities

are vulgar. Give me, a 3rd wind.

From “Eleven Days Before Spring” by JoEllen Kwiatek. (HarperCollins: $25; 57 pp.) 1994 Reprinted by permission.