A mauve, E grey, I dark, U green, O . . . range.
I do not see you, vowels, in color, so
any paraphrase is clumsy, strange.
But you bleed into one another. You
adapt and melt. I feel the textures change.
Duffle coat, army blanket, green to brown:
color’s a garment taken off, put on.
A coded sonnet brick by careful brick
assembled or dismantled, layered thick
as paint splotched on the Haitian artist’s jeans,
the painter who was murdered in the street.
Eloquent, wordless, slathered over vowels,
color clumps and crackles, croons and howls.
Into the bath of silence colors seep
and saturate our sleep.
—Rachel Hadas
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
