In the Rothko Chapel, Houston

Vincent Hostak

May 7, 2023

Silence is so accurate…, Mark Rothko

When you fall inside

it is the quietude that arrests, then rests

in all the angles where your bones meet

when you kneel.

Though it’s only held a pose for fifty years,

this place is like the ornament Keats observed:

“foster-child of silence and slow time.”

For all its soundlessness

there is an ecstatic pulse

still trapped in the center of its octagon,

heirloom energy of dervishes whirled,

knees and shoulders pressed Qibla

toward far off Makkah.

It was silence which cracked the obelisk in the pool.

A friend told me that over time

the canvases lost their glow

so they had to be exquisitely cleaned.

“Glow?” I thought. “His oils are the color of ash.”

Then from my own face

I brushed away all aggregations:

concretions of accumulated dust,

imprints from a pillow shared,

fragments of another’s skin,

consequences of imbroglios,

gravity and those years I smoked.

There it was: dancers’ gowns alight, felt caps rustling,

songs of justice spinning. When noise is erased

it leaves slate-colored canals with a glow

pushing outward in all directions.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.

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