“Van Gogh’s Ear” by Sally Ito
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Van Gogh’s Ear” by Sally Ito, first published in Poetry Pause in March 2020.
Van Gogh’s Ear
By Sally Ito
What does it hear now of its own loss
in a painting meant to be seen,
not heard?
It is a shell off in the distance
from which the distant waves of the sea
might be heard.
In the moist severed folds of skin
is the story of an angry disciple, a sword
and the healing touch of a messiah
Through its waxy cartilage, pink light
of a setting sun, or the opaque red of a burn
from being out too long on a hot summer day
painting furiously.
And in it, too, the faint invisible praise of stars
in the night, glowing radiantly in that
vast indifferent harmony of the cosmos.
Paintings are seen not heard. True.
But there is still music
in broken instruments. And the ear, cut off,
still hears it.
Copyright © Sally Ito
Previously published in Heart’s Hydrography (2022). First appeared in Poetry Pause on March 11, 2020.
Sally Ito is a writer and poetry translator who lives in Winnipeg. Her latest book is Wonder-Work: Selected Sonnets of Catharina Regina Von Greiffenger whose she co-translated with Joanne Epp and Sarah Klassen.
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