yuscape
By Donald Kuspit, Ph.D

(a”yuscape” is a painting of nature by Marlene Yu)
 

yuscape i
 

color, inconceivably fresh,
                                         like dew,
as innocent as genesis,
                                   a veil of flickering touch
spread over the beaten gold
                                           of the sun,
making nature more seductive
                                              than any myth could.
you hammer the spectrum
                                        into the ultimate material
of the alchemists,
                           subliminally enduring
in the invisibility
                        that glows in the black spaces
of visibility.
                  colorsmith, fragment the mind
into a range of feelings
                                  that stretch beyond memory,
opening vistas
                      onto prelapsarian forms,
mirages of meaning
                             in the desert thought has become.
you paint a nature
                           earth never knew,
more elemental
                        than any element it envisions,
more feverish
                     than its own fertility.
a paradise of the senses,
                                    your dream of nature
glistens with the life
                             the gods once had.

 
yuscape ii
 

it all began here,
                         in these colors,
which cascade
                      over consciousness,
leaving a wake
                      of wonder.
they are as ceaseless
                               as rain
in the forest,
                   endlessly reheating
what the touch
                      of thought cools.
lava of color,
                    illumined from within
by the light of paradise,
                                    displayed
like a dream
                   in the sublime space
of myth,
             pictured with all the freshness
fantasy can muster,
                             overflows
your pictures
                    to blind insight,
leaving one stumbling
                                in the darkness
of possibility.
                    oh that I too could move
with the swiftness
                          of the infinite’s fluidity,
incincerating
                   the world in my path,
so that before me
                          was the clear field
of feeling
              that you innocently envisage.

 
yuscape iii
 

not rimbaud’s colorful vowels,
                                              but colors more virginal
than language,
                      a rainforest of ever-new life.
your pictures capture
                                what consciousness
cannot conceive,
                          the freedom of instinct
that is the paradox
                             of nature,
the stream into which
                                 no one can step twice,
yet that flows through everyone,
                                                generating
a forest of fresh feeling
                                  with its elixir.
keep the freshness flowing,
                                         that the colors
never cease,
                   seeds of sight fertilizing
the infinite,
                 spreading in these abstract forms
that remain the last bastion
                                        of blameless life,
the last hope for paradise
                                      that was once
the enigma of earth,
                              the garden that was once
the form of god,
                         for nothing is forbidden
or remembered in it,
                               all being always ripe.

 
yuscape iv
 

i run dry,
              but your ocean of color
never does,
                  its source
being the infinite flow
                                of the cosmos
in the dense rainforest
                                 of your unconscious.
my protean consciousness
                                       quickens.
birds of paradise
                          i thought extinct
display their wings
                            in wonder
at themselves,
                     animals move swifter
than any current
                        of thought.
gods spring up
                      like mushrooms underfoot,
minerals sing
                    like glistening angels,
the mysteries once again
                                     come alive.
your color forms
                         an aura of innocence
around every growth,
                                ousting death
with its spontaneity,
                              regenerating me
the way it regenerates
                                 nature.
embalmed
                in your abstractness,
nature can no longer
                              be betrayed
by human beings,
                          believing themselves
its only creation
                        superior to it.

---