Almost Complete Poems by Stanley Moss

Author:Stanley Moss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sheepmeadow, poetry, Rhinebeck, sensuality, prayerful, sadness
ISBN: 9781609807283
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2016-02-18T15:53:06+00:00

A History of Color

(2003)

A HISTORY OF COLOR

1

What is heaven but the history of color,

dyes washed out of laundry, cloth and cloud,

mystical rouge, lipstick, eyeshadow? Harlot nature,

explain the color of tongue, lips, nipples,

against Death, come-ons of labia, penis, the anus,

the concupiscent color wheels of insects and birds,

explain why Christian gold and blue tempt the kneeling,

why Muslim green is miraculous in the desert,

why the personification of the rainbow is Iris,

why Aphrodite, the mother of Eros, married

the god of fire, why Adam in Hebrew

comes out of the redness of earth . . .

The cosmos and impatiens I planted this June

may outlast me, these yellow, pink and blue annuals

do not sell indulgences, a rose ravishes a rose.

The silver and purple pollen that has blown on the roof

of my car concludes a sacred conversation.

Against Death washerwomen and philosophers

sought a fixative for colors to replace unstable substances

like saliva, urine and blood, the long process of boiling,

washing and rinsing. It is Death who works

with clean hands and a pure heart. Against him

Phoenician red-purple dyes taken from sea snails, the colors

fixed by exposing wool to air of the morning seas near Sidon,

or the sunlight and winds on the limestone cliffs of Crete—

all lost, which explains a limestone coastline

changed into mountains of pink-veined marble,

the discarded bodies of gods.

Of course Phoenician purple made for gods

and heroes cannot be produced nowadays.

Virgil thought purple was the color of the soul—

all lost. Anyone can see the arithmetic when purple

was pegged to the quantity and price of seashells.

Remember

the common gray and white seagull looked down

at the Roman Republic, at the brick red and terra-cotta

dominant after the pale yellow stone of the Greek world,

into the glare of the Empire’s white marble.

The sapphire and onyx housefly that circled

the jeweled crowns of Byzantium buzzed prayers,

thinks what it thinks, survives. Under a Greek sky

the churches held Christ alive to supplicants,

a dove alighted on a hand torn by nails.

In holy light and darkness

the presence of Christ is cupped in gold.

Death holds, whether you believe Christ

is there before you or not, you will not see Him later—

sooner prick the night sky with a needle to find the moon.

2

I fight Death with peppermints, a sweet to recall

the Dark Ages before the word Orange existed.

In illuminated manuscripts St. Jerome,

his robes egg-red, is seen translating in the desert,

a golden lion at his feet—

or he is tied to a column naked in a dream,

flagellated for reading satires and Pliny’s

Natural History that describes

the colors used by Apelles, the Greek master,

a painting of grapes so true to life

birds would alight on them to feed.

Death, you tourist, you’ve seen it all and better before,

your taste: whipped saints sucking chastity’s thumb,

while you eat your candy of diseased and undernourished infants.

On an afternoon when death seemed no more than a newspaper

in a language I could not read, I remember

looking down at Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives,

that my friend said: “Jerusalem is a harlot,

everyone who passes leaves a gift.”

Do birds of prey sing madrigals?

Outside the walls of Jerusalem, the crusaders

dumped mounts of dead Muslims

and their green banners, the severed

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