Velasquez took a pliant knife
And scraped his palette clean,
He said, “I lead a dog’g own life
Painting a king and queen.”
He cleaned his palette with oily rags
and oakum from Seville wharves,
“I am sick of painting painted hags
And bad ambiguous dwarves.”
“The sky is silver, the clouds are pearl,
Their locks are looped with rain
I will not paint Maria’s girl
For all the money in Spain”
H washed his face in water cold,
His hands in turpentine;
He squeezed out colour like coins of gold
And colour like drops of wine.
Each cooler lay like a little pool,
On the polished cedar wood,
Clear and pale and ivory-cool
Or dark as solitude
He burnt the rags in the fireplace
and leaned from the windows high;
He said, “I like that gentleman’s face
Who wears his cap awry.”
This is the gentleman, there he stands,
Castilian, sombre-caped,
With arrogant eyes, and narrow hands
Miraculously shaped.
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