Anne Tzu Peng Lee
Painting into Poetry
Painting into Poetry
‘What is needed is a revolution in the depths and not on the surface’ - Marc Chagall
Because the words had gone
too far in to get out,
I knew they had mined their way down
and lost their bearings;
trapped, perhaps by a word-fall.
Someone told me to look
for Chagall.
He was doing a back-flip across the room
to kiss Bella Rosenfeld, floating to meet her lips
like a high-jumper, precise in his measurement of space.
Out of the window the blue cow eyed his lunacy sadly.
Armed with bright fiddles the villagers are gathering
under the fracturing moon; but the lovers lie safe
in their lilac dream. They do not disturb;
the Jew is only running out of his solitude
because Icarus is falling, like Lucifer, out of the sky.
Cock, candle, madonna, clock, dance
by the red roofs where a wedding is wending its way.
I stand on my head to see the world
and the words fall out
with my blue soul, into the picture.
Breaking uncannily in the air,
harvesting their slow rainbow dance
while the fiddlers play,
they sing to angel voices in my head.