Paul Gauguin on Atuona - revised

[BobBradshaw]

Paul Gauguin on Atuona


France had forgotten him,
and Mette's letters rarely arrived,
Paul desperate to hear of his children.

Feverous, his leg inflamed
with syphilitic sores,
he lay dying in his House of Pleasure.

His last bottle of morphine empty,
and without money,
did his final thoughts--like Keats

in Rome--turn to home?
Was the final thing
this self proclaimed "savage" saw

a painting he had placed on his easel
days before--a snow scene
of his beloved Breton?

[BobBradshaw]

revised

[Kenneth2816]

Wonderful

[BobBradshaw]

Thanks, Ken

[BobBradshaw]

tweaked

[Billy]

I don't remember what the first version was like, but you didn't change much. It was already good and this is great.The telling comes together in a brief poem.

[capricorn]

I can't remember the original, but this version is wonderful.

Eira

[BobBradshaw]

Eira, Billy — thank you so much for your comments

[Michael (MV)]

Hi Bob,

Gauguin's death as an illustration of "home is where the heart."

^^ And I add what I have learned along the way Home:

the Heart is not earthbound

In Byron's passage about the sculpture of the dying Gaul, the warrior"s thoughts turn to his home.

And here you mention the same with Keats.

Perhaps this is a Universal at dying time.


Perhaps these references testify to my belief that dying is not death, but a dying from this temporal existence that is not free from pain. "To live you only have to die" Dying is ecstatic.

An exit to an absolute Entrance -
The ultimate Exodus from the finite to the Eternal - that is Home - the haven of the humane.

Symbolically the looking back home is a looking forward to The Heavenly Homecoming -

The Heights
beyond the wuthering
Heaven

the Heart is not earthbound

With the Miracle Lift

Michael (MV)

[BobBradshaw]

Thanks, Michael, for your thoughts