Van Gogh
MAGPIE TALES
supplied the illustration
PERFECTION?
A perfect human-being could not have painted this.
Good health and eyesight would have made things bland;
Only Van Gogh's imperfections caused this brilliant view,
The brain imparting colour to the hand.
He was affected doubly, by digitalis and lead;
It is thought that these two poisons made him see
A world of sunflower yellowness, of circles and of swirls,
Unlike our world of dull conformity.
Lead-based paints were culprits; they made the retina swell,
So that he saw distortions everywhere;
He took digitalis for epilepsy, from the foxglove plant;
This caused him to see yellow in the air.
We admire Van Gogh for perfection; his view of the world is revered.
So if modern medicine leads to health perfection,
Will 'perfect' works of art become the exception, not the rule?
Are we moving in a healthy, but dull, direction?
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SHADOW SHAPES
Flowers of all colours blend in a garden plot;
No-one ever bothers as to whether they 'go' or not.
Orange grows by purple, yellow teams with red
And no-one thinks to uproot them and move them apart instead.
It must be the same with shadows made by the passing sun.
The circular and the jagged seem to blend as one.
The baskets and the flower look great by the long straight line;
They're not fighting for position; together they look fine.
Sometimes we can be too careful, sometimes we're too precise.
This jumble of different shadows, in the end, looks very nice.
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