When he worked he felt a scratch at his calf,
a scarlet wound, a whoop of blood. He was hungry;
even his eyes were hungry.
All he saw was red: red snow, red legs of women
in the village rues, red pinwheels of hay.
“It is a wonderful thing
to hurt a human being, something
that lives. It is confoundedly difficult, but after all it is splendid.”
Beyond the window, a cave opened
in the trees and led into emptiness,
a yellow you couldn’t quite see an end to.
Van Gogh walked into it,
and his body began to shake. It was a color-riot.
He could hear, somewhere, a dog
thumping its tail in the dark.
“How splendid yellow is!” he said.
—-from “The Window at Arles” by Meghan O’Rourke
