Paul Hartal

This is a vernacular painting, I said,
and she looked gracefully, hazel-eyed,
her skin ivory silk, her hair rusty red.
She cast at me an arcane, taciturn

glance, silently standing, observing.
She is the hidden source of my brush
strokes, I thought, recondite turning
of color schemes, the origin of lines

forms and space, tone and texture,
an esoteric fountainhead of mass,
the silent wheels in the protoplasm
of my cells, my art, a conscious class

of unconscious symbols, painted
metaphors, concealed inner music
of distant celestial spheres yonder,
dynamic rhythms, enduring Nordic

monads, the alpha and omega click,
a substance wandering in the somber
corridors of brain in luscious memories,
sweet curvatures rocking on amber

cosmic waves of arbitrary harmonies,
occult entropies, a reticent carnation,
and the periodicity of revolving planets,
a pied cosmic image of time duration,

a perpetual colored pendulum,
striving to obtain galactic equilibrium,
the compressed space and spring
of an intimate clockwork, the eternal

desire, an etching of infinite yearning,
a pullulating joy of the morning I know,
the beloved, warm rolling cry from
the high mountain in the chilly snow.