POEM XANTHOPSIA BY MAXINE KUMIN It wasn’t absinthe or digitalis in the Yellow House the two of them shared that led him to layer the chrome coronas or yellow the sheets in the bedroom in Arles or tinge the towel negligently hung on the hook by the door, or yellow the window, be it distant view or curtain, yolk-lick the paintings on the wall by the monkish bed. No, it wasn’t sunstroke or the bright light of southern France that yellowed the café terrace at the Place du Forum, a pigment intensified by the little white tables, the white stars in a blue sky, the deep-saffron floor, it wasn’t some chemical or physical insult that stained the vase with twelve sunflowers a urinous yellow, the water in the vase yellow, also the table under the vase—such a troubled life of yellow leading up to Vincent’s hurled wineglass arousing Gauguin’s rapier to sever his best friend’s left ear, the story they made up that Vincent lopped it off himself, wrapped it, ran down the road to the nearby bordello, where his favorite whore opened her present and fainted. He would have bled to death if Gauguin hadn’t hauled him to hospital next morning. Even in “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear,” his necessary color washes in despite greatcoat and pipe. Science has a word— xanthopsia—for when objects appear more yellow than they really are, but who’s to say? As yellow as they are, they are.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 07:59:20 +0000
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