Celia Stuart-Powles – Ⅲ
Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear
Ah, Paul, Kill him!
look now— that voice:
how I paint a rank offering
all in blue, my angry flesh
how I ache sliced away
for the sea-spray like sin,
of love, the wind t he salt taste
of your breath, as it was rent,
the moor of your arms pared away
now loosed to drift— like the waning moon
the doctor circles steeping darkness—
my nest like a gull: I cannot rest,
Eros ousted, the sore festers,
the cuckoo’s hatched, and in the distance
like an unwelcome squall, the sound of crows
rising—to sweep me away, Ah Paul . . .
“In my mental or nervous fever, or madness . . .my thoughts
sailed over many seas.”
Vincent VanGogh, Arles, January 1889
Ah, Paul, Kill him!
look now— that voice:
how I paint a rank offering
all in blue, my angry flesh
how I ache sliced away
for the sea-spray like sin,
of love, the wind t he salt taste
of your breath, as it was rent,
the moor of your arms pared away
now loosed to drift— like the waning moon
the doctor circles steeping darkness—
my nest like a gull: I cannot rest,
Eros ousted, the sore festers,
the cuckoo’s hatched, and in the distance
like an unwelcome squall, the sound of crows
rising—to sweep me away, Ah Paul . . .
