Vincent's Bedroom In Arles, Painted 1888 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

The window's a clue: It opens onto paint.
I like that. A bare cry.
You didn't care
For your limited landscape;
Nor for mine, did I.
Your brush was a living thing,
An eerie inward peeper.
That bed, it's solid, unruffled
There isn't a sleeper.
You — did you ever sleep?
Was every night nightmare
Of bottomless deep?
Pictures tilt ominous,
Slanting a spare wall,
They're barely defying gravity;
Shouldn't they fall,
Up-ended tightrope walkers?
You never painted a telephone box
High on black rocks
Of no-talkers,
Alight on a troubled sea—
But that is the very image,
Precise as a tick,
Close as a handshake,
Cold as comfort,
Wet as a tear,
Explosive's a sunflower,
Perfectly sharp and clear,
You carve, Van Gogh,
In me.