Landscape with Peacocks
(Paul Gauguin, 1892)
To make it new,
you have to return to the source,
to the childhood of humankind.
(Gauguin)
The scene infiltrates
profound cisterns of memory,
as if I had been there,
breathing that air -
its rich notes of foliage
and tang of the sea:
as if Gauguin's landscape
were archived in me.
Stripped to the waist
and probably happy,
an axeman dismembers
the limb of a tree;
two young island women
enter the clearing
in long cotton garments
that signify contact
with missionary zeal
emanating from strangers,
attaching their padlocks
to unashamed beauty.
The land rises gently
to rainforest hilltops;
serenely, two peacocks
step into the frame...