|
|
I like a long supper in the night café
with Vincent,
my cousin of the heart. The mob at Arles
strolls about
in the orange square. The yellow houses
and enormous
stars observe him. Usually, Vincent
is depressed.
Since my childhood that’s nothing new.
As he says,
he can’t control his passions. Then, Paul
leaves him
and he paints like a madman, using tubes
of pigment
like the fingers of lovers to embrace
nature
and nature burns. He says, “Guillaume,
what can I do?"
“Idiot, you have a bed, a wooden chair
and passion.
What more do you want?" “Time," he tells me.
The night is peacock
like his colors. After the supper
we walk around
a while and when we’re at his place
he offers me
a calvados and placidly writes a poem.
Willis Barnstone has published over fifty books of poetry, criticism, and translation, including From This White Island (Bookman Publishers, 1960), Ten Gospels and a Nightingale (Triangular Press, 1981), The Alphabet of Night (Frederick Brewer, 1984), Funny Ways of Staying Alive: Poems and Ink Drawings (University Press of New England, 1993), Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet: Essays and Translations (Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets (University Press of New England, 1996), Algebra of Night: New & Selected Poems 1948-1998 (Sheep Meadow Press, 1998), and To Touch the Sky: Spiritual, Mystical, and Philosophical Poems in Translation (New Directions, 1999). In addition, his work has been published in hundreds of journals, including The Paris Review, Nation, and The New Yorker. He has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including two Fulbright Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Midland Authors Award, The Gustav Davidson Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America, and The W.H. Auden Award of the New York State Arts Council. He has taught and lectured around the world, including Finland, Peru, Greece, Philippines, Argentina, and China. He is currently Distinguished Professor at Indiana University. His newest book of poems, Life Watch, will appear with BOA in June. In winter 2003 Copper Canyon will bring out Border of a Dream: The Poems of Antonio Machado, and Shambhala Books The Gnostic Bible (co-edited with Marvin Meyer).
|
|
