Black on Maroon​

After Mark Rothko 
 
1)
Some leaves look like this,
matt on tarmac.
 
They glint where rain pools.
All is camouflage.
 
What else but a window,
sill consumed by shadows.
 
The black, liquorice-like.
The light is sherbet.
 
A car is maroon;
organ walls, tissue …
 
What’s left after the sky
left its prophecy.
 
The damask of the room
on the wicker divide.
 
Black on black, a single fishnet
which isn’t mine.
 
Black on black are the wigs,
now no one’s at all.
 
2)
Such colours, the shade
of funeral balloons--
 
mauves, maroons.
And light: the kind that enters
 
through a snail’s broken shell.
In this place the pronouns
 
are incinerated, walls close
in with incremental force.
 
Like a party where all
the guests have left, where
 
through the blinds
sleeplessness is reaching
 
towards distant cars.
How your scarf droops
to an innocent smile--
how the planets
 
promise to rise,
though fall again.

---

PATRICK WRIGHT
has a poetry collection, Full Sight Of Her, published by Eyewear Publishing (2020). He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the Open University.

---