Part Eight in a series on Colour.
Babylon
The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all's poetry with him.
Rhyme and music flow in plenty
For the lad of one-and-twenty,
But Spring for him is no more now
Than daisies to a munching cow;
Just a cheery pleasant season,
Daisy buds to live at ease on.
. . . Robin, and Red Riding Hood
Take together to the wood,
And Sir Galahad lies hid
In a cave with Captain Kidd.
None of all the magic hosts,
None remain but a few ghosts
Of timorous heart, to linger on
Weeping for lost Babylon.
Robert Graves
According to Pantone which forecasts colours each year, Summer 2012’s colour is Tangerine Tango. Think of vermillion, blushing, and you’ve got it.
I’ve never owned or worn much vermillion in my life—not even lipstick, no—partly because I have this idea you have to feel a million bucks before you can slip on anything vermillion, and I’ve never quite felt like a million bucks. The time I honestly can say I felt a million bucks I was dressed in clouds of white.
And all the other happy times, brilliant birthdays and life-affirming other-people’s-birth days, candlelit dinners and garden nights, under African skies or American, lunches of laughter, Tiffany-shopping days, ghost-train and Wonderland times, summers in a cathedral of cedars, sitting on a swing catapulting out to sea, all these golden hours have not been vermillioned.
Time to change all that.
Tell me what you think.