I heard this poem this morning on "Something Understood " a positive response to losing sight.
Monet Refuses the Operation
Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~ Lisel Mueller ~
(Sixty Years of American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets)
I love this post It has given me much to think about and looking forward to discussion about it with Stan over dinner tonight. Will post comments this week. Thanks for finding and posting this one!
ReplyDeleteWhat a vivid way to present feelings of admiration for a great artist. The poem made me think about how everything in life is touched by light and how lucky I am to be able to see and respond emotionally to its different colors, tones, and hues.
ReplyDeleteThis poem teaches me in that what most would consider a handicap is viewed by the "afflicted" as a gift....even a treasure. It is a reminder to me to face difficulties with optimism and look for the new or good outcomes of a "bad" situation. How wonderful for us that Monet did experience problems with his eyesight and did not seek to be cured. Without that we would not have the whole lovely genre of impressionism. IF I embraced my handicaps instead of trying to eliminate them--what new things, what new feelings would I be graced with? Because of my defects, am I more capable of loving others, more empathetic, more charitable?
ReplyDeleteWe know that animals can hear and smell things that we humans are not capable of perceiving. In his aberration. With this NEW vision, Monet was able to understand the hauntingly complex nature of light. We get to see and know so much more about our world through his afflicted eyes.....gaslights as angels, a cathedral built on shafts of sun, buildings dissolving into the water, water lilies alive both above and again below the water, and most wonderfully, "how heaven pulls earth into its arms." What a wonderful world revealed.