Before me your stand and defy me, and I wonder why. With all your brilliance you challenge me, making show of your charms without fear. None can force you. Only hands that are holy and pure can approach you and mould your embodiments of light, these substances that transform themselves into shining rays and pierce souls to their depths, materials and luminescence, blending like flame on you face and in my heart.

All pictorial image, all expressions and all creativity pass over your living surface and flow in melody, song, poetry, bitterness and joy.

Long I regard you and see how your pigments are spread out to your borders.

I have learnt how to divide these substances, first the yellows, then the reds and then the blues, keeping the whites and the blacks for the ends of the spectrum. Others have chosen other arrangements, with warm colours on one side and cold colours on the other. You are all life and light, and I feel the warmth of your being, the flow of blood that animates you, and you breathe and speak; you are the spring in flower with blossoms of every tint, the rosy almond, pomegranates and almonds. There are soils both arid and verdant, distant mists, sparkling waters, leaping falls and their sparkling reflections. You are this vault of heaven where one plucks the stars, this allegory where the Muses consort with the fairies, where the gods of Olympus sit enthroned, patrons of the fine arts or of war or of science. You are Susanna in her bath, the Pilgrims at Emmaus, the women of Algeria. How many masterpieces there are…and yet all have sprung from you! Great but silent and obedient, you bear with us, you understand, neither contesting nor disputing. You are a Sphinx who observes and inwardly meditates.

Edde, 14/09/05