Fading Paints

Bedroom at Arles limns its point of vanishing
from planks to table to the posts of the bed.
The walls were violet once, and ravishing
scarlet made royal the simple folded spread. 

His Irises began as china-blue
spattered against a ground of imperial luster.
They've faded now, an attenuated hue,
and gold's gone back to straw; a paler mustard.

His paints had been bought cheap, the pigments weak,
as if his penury would overtake him.
Yet while his prices rise, from peak to peak,
they want today the muted simulacrum.

Susan de Sola

If you have any comments on this poem, Susan de Sola  would be pleased to hear from you.