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 it's 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 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 to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: "We haven't a pryer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!"

Others declared 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.

by John Ashbery