Your book gave me Klein, also, thankfully
It gave me Matisse, and Yuri Gagarin
Won’t each layer of colour
On a flat surface
Change both itself
And the colour beneath it
In the same way that geologists
Take core samples of rocks
Could we not have a sideways look
At the many layers of blue
And does not each layer
Allow the artist
Another hour of contemplation
To bring his blue to the surface
Then John, to light that plane
Which will now neither be
Flat nor true, yet we are able to imagine
A whole lifetime in that one colour
