Man cannot live on science alone - or - Poem O' the Week

I like posting poems from time to time. They remind me that at one point I had an interior life that did not involve anxiety over tissue culture.

Anyway, the poem of the week is by Billy Collins, a personal favorite. His work is always direct but insightful -- like prose-poetry until it isn't, when he hits a note of sublimity where only that word will do. (Click on any of the images to enlarge).

Study in Orange and White
by Billy Collins

I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene -
the cafe awning and the wicker chair -
but I was surprised when I discovered the painting
of his mother among all the colored dots
and jumpy brushstrokes
of the French Impressionists at the Musee d'Orsay.

And I was even more surprised
after a period of benevolent staring,
to notice how the stark profile of that woman,
fixed forever in her chair,
began to resemble my own ancient mother
now fixed forever in the earth, the stars, the air.

I figured Whistler titled the painting
Arrangement in Gray and Black
instead of what everyone else calls it,
to show he was part of the Paris scene,
but when I strolled along the riverbank,
after my museum tour,
I imagined how the woman's heart
could have broken
by being demoted from mother
to a mere arrangement, a composition without color.

The summer couples leaned into each other
along the quay, and the wide boats
teeming with spectators slid up and down the Seine,
their watery reflections
lapping under the stone bridges
and I thought to myself:
how fatuous, how off-base of Whistler.

Like Botticelli calling The Birth of Venus
"Composition in Blue, Ocher, Green, and Pink,"
or the other way around
like Rothko labeling one of his sandwiches of color
"Fishing Boats Leaving Falmouth Harbor at Dawn."

Or - as I scanned the menu at the cafe
where I had come to rest -
it would be like painting something droll,
say, a chef being roasted on a blazing spit
before an audience of ducks
and calling it "Study in Orange and White."

By that time, though, a waiter had appeared
with Pernod and a pitcher of water,
and so I sat there thinking of nothing -
just watching the women and men
who were passing by,
mothers and sons walking their small fragile dogs -
and of course, about myself,
a kind of composition in blue and khaki,
and, once I had poured
some water into the glass of anise - milky-green.