"His monsters," said Pasteur, "are fit to live."
Mallarme, worshipping the soaring eye
whose goal could only be the infinite,
declared, "His blacks are royal as purples."
On this grayest day, he woke to color. His flowers
no longer had the faces of new widows,
but stamens, pistils, all their apparatus;
no longer grew half submerged in the sea,
but flourished in, of all places, their vase;
no longer shone white light through black-lined features,
but shook with all the wavelengths of the spectrum,
vibrating, knocking in his cranium
so that unless Redon grabbed hold of canvas
and oils, and bore the bouquet in the world,
they would explode. He told Emile Bernard,
who said, "So, you admit the world, you want
finally to record it, you confess
Monet's genius?" "What world?" said Redon.
So he began to paint. Light darkened, quickened
in the studio; the spectrum of grays
from white to black rained on his hand and canvas.
His palette shook with perceivable fragments
of pure light, made objective by the prism
of his mind. Jonquils, iris, daffodils,
nasturtiums, roses bloomed under the brush
in a bouquet that took no flower for truth,
but from whose colors , textures, and mingled scents
all biological specimens might learn.
They grew to their full voluptuousness
as light failed, as Redon brought brush
with color and color and color to them,
color that would refuse to sleep at night,
always keeping from him mere light of day.
