the other starry night

Vincent studied the night sky for its beauty –

not as astronomers do who chart the constellations.

He pictured an afterlife in the night sky,

wrote to his brother Theo:

Hope is in the stars.

Unlike his more-famous Starry Nights, he painted

“Starry Night Over the Rhone” in real time (1888),

standing on the dusky banks of the river,

a short walk from the rented Yellow House in Arles.

Each starburst, a tiny pyrotechnic explosion, competes

with glimmering yellow streamers from gaslit buildings

along the bank. In the foreground, lovers, arm in arm,

glance up asking: What does he see that’s so special?

A century before the Hubble telescope’s galaxies

flashed across our screensavers, Vincent loaded

his canvases with swirls and dots and clumps of paint

to show us the stars. All but his brother laughed

and thought him mad. Museum lines stretching

around the block don’t begin to make reparation.