Noah Warren

 

Barcelona: Implication

The Constellations are a harmoniously composed series of 23 gouaches that Miró painted to escape the trauma of the war years.
— The Joan Miró Foundation

We’ve all gouached.

Haven’t we? Pollock lashed

stretched canvas that was Nude.

Was said to call his Ruth prude

and he spat chew in a coffee can

and shat bloodily in the can.

When I was twenty I spent three

hours in a room with the Free-

Spirited Types moving from

one inviting orifice to the welcome

of another. I was lost in my wood,

savage and stern. But also I understood

that when it was later and I was wiser

I could never forgive Herr Pfizer.

My father said we’ve all got an East River.

He had a tenuous web of veins for a liver.

His loss. Literally. Mom’s impatient art

was proved to be the most effective part

of her mothering: you should see her rich greens

well up in the power of the middle and grow lean

as they colonize the crusted edges.

My love for her is impregnable.

Pity Miró, moonblind, weary on the rocky coast

of Portugal, walking cliff paths and getting lost.

His quest for childish wonder has bent him

and riddled his skin before its time.

Put this together with that! Paint it yellow!

Murk the sky with banks of Periwinkle and Snow.

Gouache a widened eye low on the right,

so it can behold the left and the night.