Still Life with Apples, Pears, Lemons, and Grapes, 1887, by Vincent van Gogh
Was he the only one who understood the violence?
Pulsating reverberations thundered through
the tablecloth, a flimsy foundation like bedsheets underpinning
the whole affair, the commingling of sun and darkness,
the turbulence of the sky imposing its bars of shadow
across ripe and heavy fruit with knowledge of its cage,
all painted in short, wet strokes like tongues, laden
with pigment, building in the same grooves so opposites
could mingle on the canvas leaving contrasting bodies
side by side. Still life, they said. Madness, they murmured.
But tragedy was a life-long companion for an artist’s keen
eye, tracking women with their backs and spirits bent
beneath sacks weighted with coal, sketching their despair
sprawled out on the chair after a day’s stiff labor, presenting
hardness in soft brushstrokes of sulfur and garnet,
nasturtium. The fruit are mature ovaries, fertilized
and snatched from the vine, wobbling under
their own weight, like the absinthe that made you terrible.
