A YELLOW-GRAY WORLD

In a black-and-white world, everything is clear.
Contrasts are sharpened, shadows minimal.
And one knows for certain
What is good and what is evil.
In a yellow-gray world, we make our way by stumbling.
Eyes and hands glide across the yellow hemisphere:
The sun is yellow, dandelions are yellow,
Sunflower heads are yellow,
Fields ripe for harvest are yellow,
Yellow houses and yellow minutes,
Yellow journalism,
Yellow jaundice, yellow fevers,
Yellow booklets.
Canaries are yellow,
Blond-haired men and women are yellow,
Yellow-beaked fledglings—and their song
Pours out, yellow, from their yellow beaks.
Undoubtedly, despite some deviations, yellow is
The bright side
Of the yellow-gray world.
Things are grayer within the gray:
Clouds on the horizon are gray,
Branches are gray—and so are the crows,
Everything that turns gray in the wind and rain is gray,
Everything grayish and colorless,
Everything expressionless and faceless,
Gray stone, a gray daily existence,
Gray coats and gray propaganda,
A gray film, a gray cataract.
Gray creatures, gray wisps of mist
Within gray brain cells,
And the haze of stale air in the unventilated dwellings
Of the spirit—
Along with the gray hair of this weary Earth
Beneath a pandemic-shadowed sky. “Grey autumnal solitude,
And it grows ever more autumnal.”