And the last of these art poems, painting poems,
is called Jan Bruegel's Bouquet.
And somebody asked me to read this.
And I'm so glad, because it's sort of a melodramatic poem
to read, and you like to be able to offer the excuse
that somebody asked you to read it, so.
Shoe polish black background, and his flowers
strike the hour of full bloom, extinction
begins in the next shadow.
The open tulips show their black rods
and the corn meal of their stamens, garden iris,
grained papers too watery to write on,
and peonies the color of sliced ham.
An open fan of white breath accrue details of gypsophilia,
the green stems have been painted into disappearance.
They have entered the shining black wall.
He has made primary color a memory.
Tulip, iris, the descriptions of red and blue
for a blind man touching his own face.
The petals curl.
They are limp.
Bent away from resilience and pumped blood.
Two insects dangle from their own silk, two marionettes
of leftover sex touching the completely
black petal dead center in his composition,
the entire alphabet of the iris.
The way he says black.
Then black again.
Black, black, then listen, every one in every century black.
It is black.
Black at the center of the picture, at the edges,
at the heart of the flower, at the crux of the known world.
I say it is shining.
I say it is black and shining.
I say it, and my name is Bruegel.
I'm saying goodbye from century to century.
[APPLAUSE]
It didn't seem that melodramatic this time.
I sort of kept it in tow.