Chapter 30. The Source of Life.

March 30, 2019

“…In the night’s dark, by thought’s dim light,
He wrought, in crimson mantle dressed,
A Phrygian cap upon his head –
The sign of one who lived as free,
Though bound in bondage without rest.

In chambers where the shadows reigned,
Only a candle’s trembling glow
Shone like a beacon midst the storm,
While he spoke of his work below.

With highest thoughts, with trembling care,
Vivien gave body, form, and frame
To swarming visions in his mind,
And on white canvas carved their name.
He breathed in them a living soul,
He gave them depth, and edge, and whole.

From chaos he drew harmony,
From storm he shaped a sibumi,
With wisdom of Ecclesiastes
He raised anew primeval faces –
Not for his eyes, but for all eyes,
Who would receive, though unawares,
His living breath, his silent sighs.

Vivien’s face was left unclear,
For he beheld the essence near,
A constellation of all hues,
Which crowned the pedestal he used.

With back turned firmly to the crowd,
He glorified the Adam-race,
And from a heap of weighty thought
He shaped refinement into grace.

With hand that moved like sculptor’s bone,
As polished as the ivory,
He filled the void with living blood –
The clustered paints, earth’s alchemy.

He smeared the canvas, smeared his robe,
His hands with pigments of the globe –
But left unsoiled the viaducts
That bore his feelings, thoughts, and verse.

For it is not the hand that creates,
Not brush that fashions the design –
They are but children, emanations,
Of soul and consciousness divine.

Holding a palette like a score,
Where chaos of all colors swirled,
He fed the brush, then raised it high,
To call forth music of the world.

He summoned it with solemn cry
To sing the song of every heart –
Of those alive, of those long gone,
Their destinies it would impart.

Not every chaos, chaos-paint,
Declares the chaos of the mind –
Sometimes within a graceless mask
More harmony than snow we find.

He painted tree – and from its bough,
Profoundly, poetically now,
Sprang forth an apple, worm inside,
And yet another – pure, alive.

The Tree of Knowledge breathed anew:
The first-born fruit was base, untrue,
Its swampy colors sick within,
Its spotted flesh devoured by sin.

The second fruit – a crimson flame,
Of living matter brightly shone,
A fractal of all virtues framed,
A sacred hymn, a pure intone.

Another moment… stroke… a shape…
And lo! a dove takes sudden flight!
It builds its nest of Love’s own ache
Among the apples, sweet and white.

Another second – a raven wheels!
The Devil tempts not serfs with rot,
They crave not fruit where worm reveals –
But only souls unspoiled he sought.

There is no nation in this world
Whose souls have not by him been whirled.

The brush, like serpent, traced anew
Another image – age-old fight:
Where good and evil wrestle through,
And paint the canvas black and white.

The same brush painting evil’s face
Did slowly draw forth good with grace;
The same dark canvas where sin fed
Still held a grain of kindness spread.

Not brush, not paints, decide their end –
They only serve as tools, as friends.
The visions come, the plots are born
From him alone who is to form.

Instruments never do create
The mark of greatness, works of fate –
They are created endlessly
By grace of thought and ecstasy,

Whose source flows from the hidden sea,
The fountainhead of mortal strife,
The well whose name is simply this:
The inexhaustible stream of life.

And what it means for each of men,
That stream whose waters never cease,
Is his to choose, is his alone –
To shape his soul a hell, or throne…”

Having finished his poem – the idea and imagery of which Bertrand Crepeau had borrowed from a well-known watercolor of his friend, the painter Christophe Vincent – the twenty-four-year-old poet hurried toward the window. Rabat was alive with color: today Pope Francis had arrived on his visit – and for many in that city, this visit was the very source of life.