having a rothko moment

APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA

Charles Wright

Lonesomeness. Morandi, Cezanne, it's all about lonesomeness.
And Rothko. Especially Rothko.
Separation from what heals us
beyond painting, beyond art.

Words and paint, black notes, white notes.
Music and landscape; music, landscape and sentences.
Gestures for which there is no balm, no intercession.

Two tone fields, horizon a line between abysses,
Generally white, always speechless.
Rothko could choose either one to disappear into. And did.

------

Perch'io no spero di tornar giammai, ballatetta, in Toscana,
Not as we were the first time,
not as we'll ever be again.
Such snowflakes of memory, they fall nowhere but there.

Absorbed in remembering, we cannot remember--
Exile's anthem, O stiff heart,
Thingless we came into the world and thingless we leave,

Every important act is wordless--
to slip from the right way,
To fail, still accomplishes something.
Even a good thing remembered, however, is not as good as not
remembering at all.

From "Night Music"

Each second the earth is struck hard
by four-and-a-half pounds of sunlight
Each second
Try to imagine that
No wonder deep shade is what the soul longs for,
And not, as we always thought, the light.

[I have a touch of insomnia right now so sorry for the overload of posts! I'm cleaning out my mailbox and keep stumbling across the most beautiful things...this is worse than cleaning out my closet. Also, I am having trouble with the first poem--I find it beautiful in a devastating way and don't agree with much of it. But the second excerpt...now that just shook my bones.]