The Painter by John Ashbery

THE PAINTER

Sitting between the sea and the buildings

He enjoyed painting the sea's portrait.

But just as children imagine a prayer

Is merely silence, he expected his subject

To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,

Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas

Until the people who lived in the buildings

Put him to work: "Try using the brush

As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,

Something less angry and large, and more subject,

To a painter's moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer."

How could he explain to them his prayer

That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?

He chose his wife for a new subject,

Making her vast, like ruined buildings,

As if, forgetting itself, the portrait

Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush

In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:

"My soul, when I paint this next portrait

Let it be you who wrecks the canvas."

The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:

He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

Too exhausted even to lift his brush,

He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings

To malicious mirth: "We haven't a prayer

Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,

Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!"

Others declared it a self-portrait.

Finally all indications of a subject

Began to fade, leaving the canvas

Perfectly white. He put down the brush.

At once a howl, that was also a prayer,

Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;

And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush

As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

John Ashbery, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edition, ed. by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005), 1736-7.