On her
knees, she scrubs floors by day, paints all night in a candlelit garret. From some whirling nexus beyond her ken,
flowers, fruits and leaves flow from her fingers onto canvas. Form and color
rise up and dance.
oxblood,
candlewax,
and herbs--
she
extracts
essential
pigments
from
her narrow world
Starving
while war boils around her, still she paints the stained-glass gardens of her
soul. Someday her paintings will be exhibited in Paris and New York—yet Seraphine
Louis will spend her last years in a madhouse.
visions
and voices
from
another realm—
an eye
embedded
in the tree
of life
