His pale blue bones bend
graciously, fragile as fossils
round the place of song
blue is the very world
that grounds him, clothes him
in arrest against blue stone;
blinded eyes shut out
all but his vision of
impending things ; they fall
into the hole of the guitar
where his limp thumb plucks
beauty out of tightened strings.
Pablo gave us this old man
when pitiful and melancholy
were the palette’s only colors
and a gessoed tabletop
the only panel ready to receive
the pentimento of his pain.
This is what it comes to,
the blue painting seems to say,
a blindness, poor and old and
left to suffer homeless
in a world of monochrome
under a dome bereft of stars.
Cold, cold, except for one
dear possibility, colored warm—
the promise of a butternut guitar.
.
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the-man-with-the-butternut-guitar
littleoldladywho.net 