Paul Klee's Ghost Rider Late in the Evening, 1929, by Diane Kendig

Ghost Rider in Early Evening, by Paul Klee (Switzerland). 1929.

Paul Klee's Ghost Rider Late in the Evening, 1929
 
Blackness is his base here,
that pit that our quaking hearts
drive us downward to at night.
 
A Blue Rider, though,
he’s held out for what colour he could,
a most dark navy blue, that blue
to close one’s eyes and sail off
into its wild yonder. Wild
 
this guy then who rides in
on a horse breathing runes,
the two of them made of lines
we’d think have been scraped
into the black, the way
Klee scraped signs
 
into his pale “Pastorale,”
but this is no pastorale.
It’s Dusseldorf, it’s USA,
or anywhere now
or then where
it’s months from a majority
Senate who’d  denounce
“a Galician Jew.”
 
He found the depth
by spattering pigment
on the black, and layering
on top the wiry white  
ghost horse and ghost
rider, a skinny guy, his arms
made sinewy with two extra stripes,
who looks backward while
riding forth, who holds a staff
topped by a flag--
 
not a white flag,
which we could see more easily
and would reflect more, but red:
in this light, barely
visible but clearly rendered
by one who believed in rendering.

Diane Kendig

Diane Kendig’s poetry collections include Prison Terms.  A recipient of Ohio Arts Council Fellowships in Poetry and other awards, she has published poetry and prose in journals such as J Journal, Under the Sun, and Wordgathering. She curates the Cuyahoga County library’s “Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry” website.  http://diane@dianekendig.com/