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The Painting Poet
I plucked a feather with a cactus drill
From the gray wing of a thrush;
One side I sharpened to a poet’s quill,
The other end, a painter’s brush.
I paint the sage upon the shady ground
With pigment-words of silver-jades,
And then I turn my wonder-pen around
And with it add the purple shades.
–Fray Angelico Chavez
Cantares: Canticles and Poems of Youth, 1925-1932
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