The Painter

        Sitting between the sea and the buildings
	He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
	But just as children imagine a prayer
	Is merely silence, he expected his subject
	To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
	Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
	 
        So there was never any paint on his canvas
	Until the people who lived in the buildings
	Put him to work: “Try using the brush
	As a means to an end.  Select, for a portrait,
	Something less angry and large, and more subject
	To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”
	 
        How could he explain to them his prayer
	That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
	He chose his wife for a new subject,
	Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
	As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
	Had expressed itself without a brush.
	 
        Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
	In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
	“My soul, when I paint this next portrait
	Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”
	The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
	He had gone back to the sea for his subject.
	 
        Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
	Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
	He provoked some artists leaning from his buildings
	To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer
	Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
	Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”
	 
        Others declared it a self-portrait,
	Finally all indications of a subject
	Began to fade, leaving the canon
	Perfectly white.  He put down the brush.
	At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
	Arose from the overcrowded buildings.
	
	They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
	And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
	As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.