Ekphrasis with Van Gogh

a collection of poems and the paintings that inspired them

This Lent

Megan Willome

wrote some beautiful ekphrastic poems inspired by some of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings and she invited readers to join in. I did jump in for a few of them.

I thought I’d gather up these poems I dropped into her comment and share them in a neat little collection over here. I’ve tidied them up a bit, but they’re mostly as I originally wrote them. If you feel inspired to join in as well, please feel free to drop a poem or a link to a poem in the comments. Or by all means, if you’ve already written a Van Gogh poem. It doesn’t have to be a new one. I’d love to keep the Van Gogh love going.

Wheatfield with a Reaper, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, 1889. Van Gogh Museum.

Beneath a golden sun the fields are full 
and overflowing with wave upon golden 
wave of ripe grain like breakers dancing
joyfully towards shore, tossing their heavy 
heads bright with foam and churning spray.

Lost in the eternal now, the reaper works merrily, 
his grainfield is his icon of eternity
untarnished, untarnishing, untarnishable
this moment is an eternal now.

Hot sun, golden grain, singing reaper,
singing sun, golden spot of time 
lingering an eternal afternoon.

And, far away: purple mountains, 
a homely house, where at the end of the day
he will retire to rest, cool in the shade, 
cup brim-full of quenching drink,
belly full of heartening food,
rest and sleep the long night through 
while winds dance the clouds through 
fluid forms and stars 
wheel their silent, stately way overhead.

Lord, send me to work 
in such a field, send me 
to mow or gather or glean. 
Let me know the joy 
of the harvest home, the reverent
mirth at close of day when all
will return carrying sheaves of gold. 

Lord, I have been sowing 
seeds I know not 
if they'll grow. I've watered 
them with tears and wondered
if by your grace they will sprout,
shoot tall, and then bend heavy 
with the nourishing fruit. Right now 
all seems cold and bare, rocky, 
muddy, trampled and unpropitious. 
But in my heart I hope 
there will come a day of harvest. 

Lord I have planted bulbs, hoping 
for golden daffodils. I have planted 
seeds hoping for tall golden 
sunflowers. Lord, the rabbits have eaten 
my sunflowers, nibbled my tulips 
and crocuses. Lord in this muddy 
spring season I hope and watch,
but the golden time seems so far away.

The Sower, Arles, 1888, Van Gogh Museum.

fugitive pigments

What tint, O Vincent, was that green sky
when you first painted it?
What hue of blue caught your heart in its fist 
and squeezed as gently

as you squeeze the tube of color 
onto your palette? 
Or was the sky old gold, invoking 
the eternity of the icon?

Did you guess that it would someday fade 
to this eerie shade 
of storm and doom that looms over
 your sower's shoulder?

The tree leans so gently to shelter
 him with her outreached 
arms, to drop her fresh petals in his path.

The pink clouds tell me that dawn has just 
spread her rosy fingers 
and he is already hard at work — 

Or do they say that the day
 has been long and is almost over? 
But still he flings his seed over 

the rich earth which you 
have boldly stroked in purples and pinks, 
grey and blue and mustardy-yellow.

Could I go back in time and see this 
canvas as you once 
saw it, what else would I glean of this scene? 

That blue in the distant field, was it 
purple that you painted? 
Was light from the haloing sun 
richer then, more golden 
when it blinked from azure heavens?

The distance between me and this man 
with his green smock 
is not just the long years between me 
and you, Vincent, but 
time has been a thief and has stolen 
your colors.

Or they tired and fled, now only figments 
of imagination, 
faded to fancy's phantoms.

Not only can I not know what was 
in your heart or in 
your head, I can't even know what was 
in your mind's eye. 
I cannot see as you have seen or love 
as you have loved.

Yet still, I do love. I love the laborer 
and his work and I 
love the sun glowing like a monstrance 
in the sky.

I wonder what will remain of me 
and all my works, my 
loves, what will testify for me that 
once I wondered at 
your handiwork, at your fugitive 
pigments.

Almond Blossom, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

I give you the blue
sky, cloudless and clear. I give
you knobby branches
festooned with white flowers. I
give serenity.

Sunflowers, Arles 1890. Van Gogh Museum.

Well and why wouldn't you want to fill
a vase with a harvest of yellow?

Day after day they have followed their
beloved sun, turning green necks as

he moves across the bluest blue.
Drinking his rays in great thirsty gulps,

they distill gold light into ray petals
and tiny florette spirals opening

gradually from the outside toward
the heavy green heart. Bees buzz busy

and slowly seeds swell and heads grow heavy.
Gather, gather golden sunlight and

bee song. Gather deep blue dreams. Cut them
and keep them as long as you can.

Pieta (after Delacroix), 1889, Van Gogh Museum.

Dearest Vincent, about this pieta 
after Delacroix— Your lovely lady 
dressed in blue doesn't look sad to me. 
There she stands, queenly. So graceful. Her gown 
shaded with deepest twilight lapis that any
medieval illuminator painting 
in his cloister would instantly recognize 
as the color reserved for the Queen 
of Heaven. That seems right. You were in 
a cloister too when you painted her, weren't you?

Although. Her dress is perhaps just a bit 
too cheerful, blowing and furling so 
joyfully in an invisible breeze—
Don't you think? Couldn't you have made it drape 
a bit more sadly?  Couldn't you have tamed
it just a bit? Added a touch more gray? 
Made it a tad more somber? But no, there's 
an exuberance there that you couldn't 
quite hold in.
			And her arms... they don't quite seem 
to be supporting the heavy weight 
of her dead son. Rather, they seem to be 
stretched out the way they must have stretched when he 
was learning to walk. Joseph was right there 
propping him upright and there was Mary 
waiting, saying: 'Come on, son. Come.  You can 
do it. Come here to me.' And the toddling 
baby took his first faltering steps and 
tumbled into her arms. But here she is
in that moment of waiting to receive 
his weight. Or maybe it's me she's waiting 
for? 'Come here, my daughter, come and see. Come, 
let me hold you, too.' 
					Her face looks serene. 
Hardly troubled. Yes, there is a darkness 
around her eyes. Her mouth a little tight. 
She's holding herself together well. No 
weeping and wailing here. She's beyond tears, 
beyond grief. She's cried herself out and now 
she looks out beyond herself to comfort 
the others. Her shy Mona Lisa smile 
sweetly anticipates the great secret: 
He's coming back. 
				And lastly, I can't help 
but think, dear Vincent, that your slumbering 
Christ who slumps against the rock, head against 
his mother's breast, looks an awful lot like 
you: Short reddish beard, reddish hair... did you 
imagine in your distress, dear Vincent, 
being held in the arms of so tender 
a mother? Did she gently comfort you, 
the sorrowful mother? Oh, I hope so. 

---

Also, here are some more pictures and poems from my archives:

The Mulberry Tree, 1889, via Flickr.

You call it a mulberry tree
but I know it's the burning bush.
See its branches holding heaven.

Know this is sacred ground—if you
remove your shoes your feet will touch
the very ground that God has touched.

The hills sing joy for God has come.

The Garden of the Asylum at Saint-Rémy, May 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum,

In the wild garden a little  
bench crouches half-hidden beneath  
the bushes and half-lost in tall  
waving grasses. It would rather  
not be found by patients  
from the yellow-walled asylum.  
It has heard too much of their heart-  
aches and tears and is afraid. It  
would prefer to skulk in the shade,  
bask in occasional sunbeams,  
dreaming stony dreams all afternoon.

In the wild garden spring breezes
bring bumblebee thoughts buzzing round. 

May 28, 2023

Landscape with Snow February 1888, Guggenheim Museum, New York.

snow melt —
white world turned  
into a tapestry of colors

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And then finally one from today:

The Sower, June 1888

Everywhere the sower-sun scatters 
his profligate light,
generously warms all the cold clods  
of earth and makes hidden seeds 
ripen-- the farmer knows not how.

The farmer sweating in the heat
flings forth his own handfuls of scatter-
shot seed over good ground and bad
he nourishes hope against hope that rain 
and sun will feed what he has so carelessly planted.

Love is generous, it does not calculate
nor hold back anything. It gives
and gives and gives. Flings itself 
wholehearted, headlong into every possible 
place. And even the impossible places. 

Love roots plants in clefts of rock
in asphalt-cracks. Love builds untidy nests 
on pharmacy signs and lampposts, 
under tattered awnings and in leaf-clogged gutters.
Love is unreasonable, it does not chase away 

the thieving crows. It harvests out of season.
It hauls up unexpected heaps of silvery 
glimmering fish, it multiplies loaves,
it produces feasts in wild places: 
in deserts, on mountaintops, 
in restless hearts that thought they'd given up. 

Today I was delighted to find that in his first weekly general audience Pope Leo tied his catechetical discussion on the parable of the sower with this painting of Van Gogh’s. My poem borrows a few of the pope’s words directly and also builds on some of his thoughts, and of course leans on Van Gogh, but the rest is mine.

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