I was seldom taken by poetic tales like those by Chaucer, nor able to commit them to memory
with the exception of that tail by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
that belonged to the dog who trots freely in the street
and has his own dog’s life to live and to think about,
and I decided to follow it past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen into poems, and dream of painting them.
I would paint LeRoi Jones’ kneeling girl praying, talking into her own clasped hands,
and Elizabeth Bishop’s fisherman mending his nets,
but if I tried to paint William Blake’s The Little Black Boy I would feel presumptuous, an intruder.
I would dream a painting of Lewis Carroll’s Jaberwocky with its eyes of flame, and I would paint Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ancient mariner with the albatross about his neck, and Emily Dickinson’s clown who ponders the experiment of green as if it were his own.
I would paint Rita Dove’s empty chair behind the garage, vacant because the children awoke, and Alex Dugan’s house, where nothing is plumb, level or square. And I would paint J. Alfred Prufrock’s love song, the room where women come and go talking of Michelangelo, and if I were sufficiently upbeat I would attempt to paint T.S. Eliot’s place where there is no end of the voiceless wailing or to the withering of withered flowers (doubtless a fall landscape).
I would paint Sylvia Plath’s rage against the Nazis, her Lady Lazarus saying,”A cake of soap, a wedding ring, a gold filling. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.” She puts me on a pacifist footing (although I’m always there); now give me a rifle and I’ll paint Henry Reed’s antiwar Naming the Parts, with directional arrows for the safety catch, bolt, and breach, surrounded by flowers and tree branches and blossoms.
Then I would resurface from withering and war to paint Casey, proud, defiant, smiling, haughty - striking out.
I would paint Gerard Manley Hopkin’s dappled things and couple-colored skies and rose moles all in stipple upon trout that swim, abstract, with no idea where to begin.
Finally I would paint James Weldon Johnson’s God (likely not His face) rolling the light around in his hands until he made the sun, but I would skip Keats’ death-saturated odes and sonnets; instead I’d paint Galway Kinnell’s St Francis blessing the creased forehead of the sow.
I think A.A. Milne’s Happiness will be joyful to paint - a boy in great big waterproof boots and a great big waterproof Mackintosh and a great big waterproof hat who tells us, “And that is that.
And it is.
