The Left Ear and the Wheat (Vincent van Gogh)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You squeezed
the yellow
straight from the tube
because mixing it
would have made it
less yellow
and the wheat field
outside the asylum window
in Saint-Rémy in June
was not a mixed yellow.
It was
the yellow
the tube
was invented for
and the yellow
tasted like
the hot
zinc-oxide brightness
of a synapse
firing
in a visual cortex
that has stopped
asking
the frontal lobe
for permission
to see
what it is
seeing.

[Verse 2]
The temporal lobe
on the left side
where the auditory cortex
hums to itself
all day
was the side
that would not
stop humming
and the doctors
wrote
*episodes of confusion*
and you wrote
fourteen paintings
in fourteen days
in July
and the doctors
did not know
what to write
about that.

[Chorus]
You cut the ear
on the side
that was humming
and carried it
in newspaper
to a woman
in Arles
on Christmas Eve
and the gesture
had the precise
red-paper weight
of a gift
wrapped
by the temporal lobe
and not
by the man
attached to it —
you gave away
the part
that would not
stop listening
to a woman
whose job
was to listen
and the logic
was perfect
if you were
the ear
and not
the painter.

[Outro]
Theo
sold one painting
your whole life
and kept
sending the money
every month anyway
and the amygdala
of a brother
who sends the money
to the brother
who sends
the paintings
nobody wants
is the only circuit
that explains
devotion
without expectation
of return.

You said
*the sadness
will last forever*
and the wheat field
you painted
the week before
is the happiest painting
anyone has ever made
and you were
wrong
about the sadness
and right
about the yellow
and the yellow
was forever
and the sadness
was not.

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