Blue, the infinite within a boundary hue.
Edo artists relished its blood-drain
of sea dawns. Westerners learned to brew
from the Virgin’s mantle the brim celestial stain.
Between the coloring book and the sky pots
wedging tombstones, it invades the otherwise
green. Few flowers: forget-me-nots,
plumbago, iris, hydrangea, gentians rise
to approximate themselves in the pressed pigments.
In the war against death, blue guards the pass
between hopeless peaks. Dim stream regiments
march in the mind sky of refracted masks.
It is blue that imagines green is born to die.
Sweeping for the dream sunk, a beacon’s eye.
Ricardo Pau-Llosa’s eighth book of poems is The Turning. In 2017, Del Centro Editores released a limited edition of Intruder Between Rivers/Intruso Entre Rios with translations into Spanish by Enrico Mario Santí. Pau-Llosa is also an art critic and curator.
