The Colour of Madness

In the wake of a starry night

 

The shutters rattle in the yellow gloom,
A house once filled with paint and desperate fire.
Now haunted by the ghosts that line the room,
Where Vincent's fevered mind could not retire.

 

The quarrel with Gauguin still burns his chest,
A friend now lost, the bond of artists torn.
He slashed his ear, the madness took the rest,
A mind too wild, unravelling, forlorn.

 

The swirling stars still blaze across the night,
His brush once danced to capture trembling skies.
But in his soul, no flicker of their light,
Just darkness deep, where all creation dies.

 

The crows still circle, black against the gold,
The wheatfields bend beneath a sullen sky.
A shot, a wound--"his body growing cold,
But death delayed, and left him there to lie.

 

Two days he lingered in a quiet bed,
His brother’s tears, the only warmth he knew.
No laurels crowned his fevered, aching head,
No grand farewell--"just sorrow bleeding through.

 

And when he died, his name was barely known,
His colours lost upon a world so blind.
Yet now they blaze, and in their light has grown
A legacy that time could never bind.