Letter to Hieronymous Bosch
Small wonder you fled,
Maestro, lashed with strokes of birdsong,
dazzled by the spring dawn.
Back in the workshop, you latched all the shutters
Your gaze lingered on the rimy boards.
There is a black so transparent,
that one needs but stare to see far,
and nothing more, just far.
But this was darkness.
Your dry brushes like a bundle of twigs;
the paint on your palette: bird droppings.
You heard a voice urge:
Don’t choose, whatever happens, don’t choose,
Walk the verge of the possible
A sheer fall on either side.
Combine the contradictions.
Stitch scraps of flame into an inferno
with a needle of ice and thread of blood.
Don’t be afraid.
Fear of grandeur makes us
smaller than we are.
Don’t divide the world into holiness, rapture and fear.
The world is no triptych.
Mix the paints, good and evil,
junggle things about!
Madness soothes…
And the fragrance of herbs drying
in the hot sun behind the window spared you.