IMPROVISATION #25
(in memory of Luis Marsans
1930-2015)

Luis Marsans
it was only one year ago
we lost then recovered you
in review of your paintings
exploring with you
Proust's "Rembrance
of Things Past"
it was snowing also
your last January day
and it caused me
to pause in a pall
that kept your memory
as I was going to visit you
in a museum art catalog
and speak quietly
to you as a poet
who could make a memory
of a coke can or Bik pen
resuming my play
of dialogue
about your exiled Catalan fate
how you traveled to Mexico
rebelled with the surreal artists
who came before you
set loose with adventure
always striving for clarity
spanning your honorable
cultural elan,
you will live again
Luis Marsans
in this fine art's quatrain
as in "Varia" (1983)
a one in a century time
which kept your viable
invisible soul on a shield
from my ramparts to tell
in the trial of a language
on a color field
from your departing breath
in the area of long passages
hearing a village's evensong
that discovers how to assuage
an image of humanity
we who have wept for you
in the last toll of a bell
that presages death.