The Painter

Sitting between the sea and the buildingsHe enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.But just as children imagine a prayerIs merely silence, he expected his subjectTo rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.So there was never any paint on his canvasUntil the people who lived in the buildingsPut him to work: “Try using the brushAs a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,Something less angry and large, and more subjectTo a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”How could he explain to them his prayerThat nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?He chose his wife for a new subject,Making her vast, like ruined buildings,As it forgetting itself, the portraitHad expressed itself without a brush.Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brushIn the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:“My soul, when I paint this next portraitLet it be you who wrecks the canvas.”The news spread like wildfire through the building’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 the buildingsTo malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayerNow, 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 subjectBegan to fade, leaving the canvasPerfectly 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 brushAs though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.