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Before there were prisms, the colour was white
Between my lips parted, false water in white
From lake's darkest depths, fish kiss your reflections.
Desolate blacksmith, my heart hottest white.
Pre-crescent moon darkness, the autumn trees wearing
All festive oath taking, stripped down to just white.
That castle of sand, gritty seconds is shedding
Receding high tide, watercolours all white.
Rending of roses, cuckoo feathers, clocks flying
Fennec Fox, teeth and claws, gleaming still white?
My black and white cat is grey at night
and the tabby totally disappears.
Why are all cats grey at night?
Appearances often deceive, you know:
a bird in the hand knows how to draw blood
and feet in the street can be clay at night.
Alley cats slink through the asphalt streets
avoiding the playgrounds so harshly lit
that the sodium glare is like day at night.
Smoke and mirrors: Love lies stippled,
using the bits to suggest the whole.
The finest of hatching looks grey at night.
Logical thinking rarely helps much.
It colours your thoughts and ruins the view —
Socrates pales, fades away at night.
Roy G. Biv would love to explain, but
he can't come back till the rain starts again,
and he's never been seen — no way! — at night.
The road gone bye and ahead is black
And without moon so much more is black.
The cat that walks under the ladder,
Looks in the broken mirror, is black.
My mind is drowned beneath echoes,
Lost and cold where the water is black.
My heart with a shock was convulsed
Now tape that insulates it is black.
My religion judges my soul and
In the confessional all is black.
I spent the day in a garden so white
It hurt my eyes to look up from the page.
I was trying to make "love" rhyme with "white".
Waves crashed at the foot of the cliff
Revealing tiny ammonites
Encased in grey shale flecked with white.
When Hirohito died, some said they thought
He'd known more than he should about the war.
Don't believe all you see in black and white.
Dr Renouf said "Ask the question why,
Girls, keep a page at the back of your notebooks,
For "Why is the sky blue?" "Why is white?"
I was still trying to get your attention.
This is a very roundabout valentine
To a secret colour, lost in white.
The Dowager's photo appeared in the Times
Re-crossing a bridge by a far-off palace;
An attendant held an umbrella of white.
I have neglected distinctions of colour
At my peril, taking the rainbow for granted.
The colour of innocence is nothing like white.
She rearranged cushions on the couch — all white,
like the couch, the carpet, walls of eggshell white.
Have you walked across a desert? Palest sand
with nothing growing, only bones leached white.
The ancients Greeks, it's said, painted their statues,
those perfect forms now bleached to Attic white.
Walking down the aisle, she almost tripped
on her veil, it was so lacy long, unblemished white.
How many colors, whirled together faster than
the eye can see, ignite a shine called white.
I sleep in a cocoon of sheets and moonlight,
the Harvest Moon almost full, unbearably white.
The Fates spin their threads, their yarns, dying
them psychedelic colors that fade so soon to white.
Encre Authentique, "Lawyers' Ink," for orders of execution, though paper crumbles,
glowing in the night for three hundred years, enduring black legalese, these letters.
Grise Nuage, grey clouds of 1943 for Irene Sendlerowa, savior of children from
the Warsaw Ghetto, for her heart broken, but never broken, of little ease, these letters.
Bouquet d'Antan, please please don't leave, words in sorrowful faded rose, desolation
unremembered, only watching the rain, writing, sorrow without surcease, these letters.
Café des Iles, never say you love me, and if we meet, I'll pretend I've forgotten your face.
Faded brown written on leaves, let them blow away in the breeze, these letters.
Violette Pensée, I will bury your bottle in fragrant petals, write by the light of candles
on turtles' backs, pen delicate lyrics of love and loss, plus an occasional tease, these letters.
Éclat de Saphir, flashing blue scooped from the sun-glinted ocean, sign room service for two,
"Étouffée d'écrevisses, Pinot Grigio, Mousse au chocolat," caprice, these letters.
Lierre Sauvage, shadowed green, forest tree, flow as I copy out Akhmatova, "The glass
doorbell rings, don't touch me," thoughts Stalin's shadows could not seize, these letters.