[Maryann Corbett]

Well, while we're on brown, I should post the poem I mentioned up above, Rhina Espaillat's "Brown":

Brown of the sparrow hopping where seeds lie,
of the fat woodchuck foraging, and brown
of marsh in April mirroring the sky.
Brown of my mother's eyes, of my still town
in heavy rains, of rust, of nested down
long after flight, of chocolate on chill nights
when I was young, of oak, of pews, of crown
around God's wounded brow by altar lights;
of log in the cold hearth the match ignites
like memory; of dried blood on a sheet;
of names on a long list the stone recites;
brown of the earth that waits, stroking the feet;
brown of late shadows gathering, of loam,
of that first sleep, of rest, of going home.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Lovely discussion. Lovely little anthology we're compiling here. Thank you, Maryann. I can recall any number of colorful lines from poems in which color is a key supporting player in one way or another, but not the real star of the show:

Nature's first green is gold, (Robert Frost)

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me, (Jenny Joseph)

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn. (E.E. Cummings)

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth; (John Keats)

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; (Dylan Thomas)

When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils; (William Wordsworth)

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve. (Edward Lear)

This Walter de la Mare poem may be a lesser work than some of the ones excerpted above, but it's certainly all about color:


Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.


And then there's this Richard Wilbur:


Green

Tree leaves which, till the growing-season’s done,
Change into wood the powers of the sun,

Take from that radiance only reds and blues.
Green is the color that they cannot use,

And so their rustling myriads are seen
To wear all summer an extraneous green,

A green with no apparent role, unless
To be the symbol of a great largesse

Which has no end, though autumn may revoke
That shade from yellowed ash and rusted oak.

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks for all of those, Chris. I especially love the Wilbur.

I've been struggling a little with that main character/bit player question. Here's Rachel Hadas's "The Golden Road," in which color seems to be incidental but still functions as the cord that ties the whole together.

On a September road I met my son
walking the other way. I had the hill
to climb; he was returning from a run.
xxxxxNo surprises; he
xxxxxknew I was nearby
as he knew I was. But precisely where
our paths might meet was a benign surprise.

The road was rutted, plastered with gold leaf.
Did our eyes, as we neared each other, meet?
More of a full-body recognition:
xxxxxthis tall young stranger
xxxxxstriding silently
around a bend, who paused on seeing me
(however I appeared) and then passed on.

Autumnal radiance thickened
by complications, memory, history--
nothing startling, in my mother's phrase.
xxxxxThe gold road curves.
xxxxxThe living pass the dead.
Old and young acknowledge one another;
then each takes their separate path ahead.

Oh Muse, peel off your dove-gray cardigan.
September, fallen leaves, and cool noon sun:
I rounded a gold curve and saw my son.