Mark Rothko Song - Dar Williams

The blue it speaks so full

It’s like the beauty one can barely stand

Or too much things dropped in your hand

And there’s a green like the peace

In your heart, sometimes

Painted underneath the sheets of ashy snow

And there’s a blue like where the urban angels go, very bright

Now the Calder mobile tips a biomorphic sphere

Then it swings its dangling pieces 'round to other paintings here

Your behavior is so male

It’s like you can’t explain yourself to me

I think I’ll ask Renoir to tea

For his flowers are as real as they are, all the time

And the sunlight sets the furniture aglow

It’s a pleasant time as far as people go

How far do they go?

Well, his roses are perfect and his words have no wings

I know what he can give me and I like to know these things

I met her at the funeral

She said I don’t know what he meant to me

I just know he affected me

An effect not unlike his art, I believe

The service starts and we are in the know

He had so much to say, but more to show

And ain’t that true of life?

So we weep for a person who lived at great cost

And we barely knew his powers till we sensed that we had lost

A friend and I in a museum room

She says, «Look at Mark Rothko’s side

Did you know about his suicide?

Some folks were born with a foot in the grave

But not me, of course.»

And she smiles, as if to say we’re in the know

Then she names a coffee place where we can go, uptown

Now the painting is desperate, but the crowds wash away

In a world of kind pedestrians who’ve seen enough today