About Text Size: larger | normal | smaller
Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

Self Portrait with Straw Hat, Arles, 1887

 

My mirror brims, each morning it promises light.
Each morning it dulls, its eye a blank stare.
Or is it my stare that is the mirror?

Here the lunacy of grey creeps like dust at the crossroads,
denying fresh green, making drudges of wayside poppies.
I wipe and wipe the small square of my bedroom window.

In the garden the other inmates walk, shabby men
whose feet drag one beat behind each step.
They stop, forget that they are men, and sob.

Today I do not walk. They will bring me
my easel and paints. I shall scrape the sharp
yellow sunlight into the straw of my hat.

My shirt I will imprint with the sky – not the
worn blue of old men’s eyes – but a blue that burns
liquid yellow into cornfields, ignites flames in the stars.

I turn the mirror to the wall, but as I paint
he stares, red-eyed, hollow-cheeked
in Gethsemane’s walled despair.

I crown him with a hat of straw.