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SPIRIT PAINTING by Alexandre Amprimoz El Greco in Venice Drank the wine of Titian. Later, too proud to negotiate With death Or even continue The study of minor miseries, He nailed tall spirits On innocent canvas. He must have known of men As Rilke was to know of angels; Known what the Torquemadas Heard in the rumbling Of mystic souls, those long Faced lovers of God. He must have considered Across some suicidal autumn Juan de la Cruz in dark Toledo dungeons; and in Valladolid He must have felt the agony Of desolate prisons Where Luis de León Burned like a humble candle Consumed by a fever Asymptotic to the Eternal. After the Golden Age, After the best of his maturity, He was Toledo and he was Spain And like an angel he saw the dead As everlasting, the stark spirit Of his old age, his best art. Finally understanding Repetition as his road To that infinite called aleph, He painted St. Francis in Ecstasy Eighty times eleven. Always gathering light, Like Theresa of Jesus He built an Interior Castle. © Alexandre Amprimoz « Home | Contributor Notes » |
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