[Andrew Frisardi]

Yes, Gregory, the Yellow Cab detail is great, and especially “parental yellow.” Hecht can really paint a scene.

Here are two lyrics by Robert Francis:


The Name of Gold

Reserve the name of gold for gold,
And having named the thing be done.
Be glad that nothing else is gold,
Not flower, leaf, fruit, moon or sun.

Let each be color to itself.
Or let whoever must compare
The thing he loves to something else,
Find something comparably fair.


Blue Winter

Winter uses all the blues there are.
One shade of blue for water, one for ice,
Another blue for shadows over snow.
The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice—
Both different blues. And hills row after row
Are colored blue according to how far.
You know the bluejay’s double-blue device
Shows best when there are no green leaves to show.
And Sirius is a winterbluegreen star.

[Gregory Dowling]

Andrew, Roger had already posted "Blue Winter", but it's one of those poems that it's always good to see again! And thanks for "The Name of Gold", which I did not know.

Here's another poem about paintings, hardly unexpected in such a thread:

Deborah Warren
Two Madonnas for Private Devotion (Giovanni Bellini)

The pale Madonna degli alberetti
grasps the child before her, but He stands
without her on a marble parapet; He
doesn’t need her insubstantial hands.
And sentinel on either side, a pair
of trees, as delicate as though they drew
their silhouettes out of the yellow air,
shadows her mantle, gentling the blue.
The landscape, halcyon and far away,
is Arcady, a pastoral, a scene
where too much sunlight shows a time of day
– a sky too gold – that never could have been.

Here, also circa 1487,
another child and Virgin. Goodness, though: See
what has happened (stranger still) to heaven!
Madonna dei cherubini rossi!
Six red angels’ heads – and I mean red;
crimson – on ruffs of cumulus, they hover;
tinging the clouds with pink behind her head.
She gazes on His face, though, like a lover
(the dull face of a local shepherd child);
she wears, beneath the blue cloak (de rigueur),
a dress red as the world, scarlet and wild:
Of these two Marys, I might worship her.

Here's a link to the Bellini painting.

And here's another poem by Deborah Warren, centred on the same colour:

Elizabeth's Dress

Elizabeth's dress was not the red of claret,
not maroon or amethyst or rose.
Vermilion? Not exactly. Was it scarlet?
Ruby? Poppy? Crimson? None of those.

I can have you read the way the velvet
poured itself around her narrow ankles -
tell you how it showed her shoulders: What
I can't describe (except by saying not
and cataloguing everything it wasn't)
would make it flesh and blood and living - but
a thing like color? Dim description doesn't
splash you with the dye that dyed the dress
or turn your head or make you catch your breath -
and if I could make you see its shade of red,
I still could not describe Elizabeth.

Both poems come from The Size of Happiness (Waywiser Press).