Poetry Break: "Mistral"

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, June 1889

(The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

The mistral is a chilly, northwesterly wind that blows mainly in the winter and spring in the Gulf of Lion, originating in air cooled above France's central plateau and the Pyrenees. The cooled air descends from its heights as a katabatic wind, entering the Garonne Valley and moving southeast, increasing in velocity by funnel effect as the valley narrows. Accelerated in this way, it bursts into the Gulf of Lion as a cold wind.

There's a belief that the incessant blowing of this frigid wind drives people insane, or so I was once told by a woman named La Porte in a letter from the South of France. She claimed that it drove Vincent van Gogh mad, and it's true that Van Gogh did call it the "merciless mistral" when he was staying in Arles in 1888.

About 100 years later, in Europe and thinking of Van Gogh, I wrote this lyric:

Mistral

Wind of evil from the mountains,
Wind from darkness of the hills,
Toss the stars in glowing fountains
Struck like sparks from grinding wheels.

Drive a man to dread the morrow --
Whisper nothing in his ear;
Wrap his soul in shrouds of sorrow --
Hold him in unyielding fear.

Wind of evil from the mountains,
Wind of darkness from the hills,
Toss the stars in glowing fountains
Struck like sparks from grinding wheels.

I'll claim copyright for 1988, in memory of Van Gogh, though I'm not entirely sure about the date. Have a starry, starry night.