I saw the painter’s gift when it arrived.
Two peasants carried the large triptych
Into Father’s private study where it hung on the wall.
Sometimes I would sneak there to stare
at a world within a curious globe
painted on the outside, realistic black clouds
moving in, as if to predict some dark change.
I knew not what.
At special feasts, I overheard the men laughing
as they drank. When Father opened the painting,
they were stunned to silence.
He would announce, “There before you:
Heaven and Hell on either side, and, in the middle,
the Garden of Earthly Delights.”
The men murmured for a while.
Then, the laughter began again,
as they argued over sins of the flesh
and named the grotesque images they saw.
When I was older, still curious about what
was hidden behind the globe, I met the painter,
Hieronymous Bosch, an older, kind and crumpled man.
I wondered how could he paint
the horrors those men saw?
One day, our house was empty.
I could have chosen to stay in my room, but
drawn by curiosity, I slipped downstairs
to Father’s feasting room to stand
before the globe. The silver colors shimmered
as I slowly opened the triptych
to discover a riot of color:
Heaven on the left. I recognized Adam and Eve,
And on the right, Hell so black I shuddered,
repelled by creatures strange and ferocious.
In the center, Father said, Bosch had painted
a garden of earthly delights,
but this was no world I knew.
If I were in his painting, what
would I be? A fallen angel? Or tiny creature,
there, under the table next to Bosch himself,
forever fixed in his world of codes
I could not decipher.
I closed my eyes, but the colors remain,
the images of creatures so fantastic,
so horrific, I wished I had never opened
Bosch’s triptych. I wanted to scrub my eyes clean
and forget I ever wondered what he painted
behind the globe of some mysterious world.
My choice. My penance now
as I close the triptych and pretend
nothing has changed.
He would announce, “There before you:
Heaven and Hell on either side, and, in the middle,
the Garden of Earthly Delights.”
The men murmured for a while.
Then, the laughter began again,
as they argued over sins of the flesh
and named the grotesque images they saw.
When I was older, still curious about what
was hidden behind the globe, I met the painter,
Hieronymous Bosch, an older, kind and crumpled man.
I wondered how could he paint
the horrors those men saw?
One day, our house was empty.
I could have chosen to stay in my room, but
drawn by curiosity, I slipped downstairs
to Father’s feasting room to stand
before the globe. The silver colors shimmered
as I slowly opened the triptych
to discover a riot of color:
Heaven on the left. I recognized Adam and Eve,
And on the right, Hell so black I shuddered,
repelled by creatures strange and ferocious.
In the center, Father said, Bosch had painted
a garden of earthly delights,
but this was no world I knew.
If I were in his painting, what
would I be? A fallen angel? Or tiny creature,
there, under the table next to Bosch himself,
forever fixed in his world of codes
I could not decipher.
I closed my eyes, but the colors remain,
the images of creatures so fantastic,
so horrific, I wished I had never opened
Bosch’s triptych. I wanted to scrub my eyes clean
and forget I ever wondered what he painted
behind the globe of some mysterious world.
My choice. My penance now
as I close the triptych and pretend
nothing has changed.
Today’s prompt from Napowrimo asks us to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted sometime between 1460 and 1510.
If you'd like to learn more about this complex painting, you might read "Digging for Secrets in the Garden of Earthly Delights" or check out Wikipedia. This prompt was intriguing and not so easy to write!
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