​Untitled #18, by V.J. Saraf

​Untitled #18
 
This poem was written after Untitled #18, by Howardena Pindell (USA) 1977:
https://rosecollection.brandeis.edu/objects-1/info/11152?sort=0
​
How tempting it must have been,
      painting thumbtack after thumbtack white,
   sticking bit after bit of white paper on the canvas,
and smearing the few blank spaces that remained
                         with thick white paint,
 
to let loose with a sudden wild brushstroke of blue
      cutting in a lusty swoosh across one corner
            of the canvas, or to spill
       a pot of carmine red violently in the middle
   and rub in some yellow and phosphorescent green
           and splash it around like the visual
                  representation of a scream,
 
but that would have been untrue to the way
         life is for most of us most of the time:
               a great whiteness, stretching like a fog
        of sameness and numbness from yesterday
   to tomorrow, in which if you look with the eyes
of a ruthless owl or a prehistoric gatherer
 
you will see, every so often, here and there
       a small faint smudge of pink,
          a limp scratch of green, blearing
    reluctantly through the fog, which
 
you must learn to fasten upon and celebrate,
        to catch and devour, if you wish
not to pass your days in a blur of hunger.
 
V.J. Saraf
 
V. J. Saraf lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and young daughter. By day he works as an executive at a software firm in the financial services space; by night, he is a tucker of blankets, a reader of picture books, and an occasional poet. His first book of poetry, For Once Then Nothing, was published by Kelsay Press in 2021, and his previous journal publications include a sonnet based on John Singer Sargent's Helen Sears in The Ekphrastic Review. When not working, tucking, or writing, he sometimes sails in Boston Harbor or takes in a baseball game at Fenway Park. 

Read another Saraf poem here:
​https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/helen-sears-by-v-j-saraf