My Virtual Reading Room

He liked the way light went down the sky
And slid on church fronts, beckoning their shapes,
The more the shadows shaped the stone,
The more that Monet gaped and stood amazed
At every shadowed fret, each spire that blazed
The crazed incredible soft fracturings of light
When God said, Sun now set, now dark, now dark, now night.
Each measuring of air, each loss of sight
And then--reverse--erase the shade, sketch in the bright.
God's whisperings of sun, the merest drift
Drove Monet to his paints to catch and sift
Illuminations moulded like bright shrouds
In faceted cathedral face or dying clouds,
The blush of storms, the way wind looks in grass
Serenities of waterflower trapped in glass
And held forever till some day
Some wandering soul, fog-kept, stops, stares, to say:
Monet was camera to dawn, noon, dusk, and murmured night.
Monet told God: "Please, light!" And there was light.

(Ray Bradbury)