Our Color is a Meditation²
Two Colors are Never the Same –
Even if they’re from the Same Tube³
The Selection of the Prism cannot be
Compared to the Confusion of a Sunset⁴
Draw Fresh Colours from the Vernal Flow’rs⁵
If Color cannot Cure can it at least Incite Hope?⁶
The Hue which thou so Carefully dost Nourish⁷
A Person in Hue All Hues in their Controlling⁸
We sweep with Many-Colored Brooms –
And we leave the Shreds behind⁹
Motes of Dust Dance into Color¹⁰
¹ Hermann Hesse tr. Richard & Clara Winston, A Dream
² Wallace Stevens, Debris of Life and Mind
³ Derek Jarman, On Seeing Red
⁴ Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Naturalist
⁵ Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
⁶ Maggie Nelson, Bluets 29
⁷ Samuel Daniel, Beauty, Time, and Love
⁸ William Shakespeare, Sonnet XX
⁹ Emily Dickinson, She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms
¹⁰ Yukio Mishima tr. John Nathan, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace