Dark, dark my light

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   




Dragan Bibin




 Avigdor Arikha


Yuliya

Wilhelm Sasnal

Emilie Charmy


Vincent Nappi III


Andro Wekua







Rudy Cremonini 


 Rafale Hayashi 

 This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to. 
 


  Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind. 



...with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.


 Tom Bennett 

      And in broad day the midnight come again!   

   A man goes far to find out what he is—

   Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

   All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Juan Muñoz 


Mireille Blanc 


 Alice Neel


John Anderson









1,3,5 and the title  - from a poem of Theodore Roethke
2. and 4. line - Sylvia Plath