The blue it speaks so full,
It's like the beauty one can barely stand
Or too much things dropped in your hand
And there's a green like the peace in your heart, sometimes
Painted underneath the sheets of ashy snow
And there's a blue like where the urban angels go, very bright.
Now the Calder mobile tips a biomorphic sphere
Then it swings its dangling pieces round to other paintings here.

Your behavior is so male
It's like you can't explain yourself to me,
I think I'll ask Renoir to tea
For his flowers are as real as they are, all the time
And the sunlight sets the furniture aglow.
It's a pleasant time as far as people go, how far do they go?
Well his roses are perfect and his words have no wings,
I know what he can give me and I like to know these things.

I met her at the funeral,
She said "I don't know what he meant to me
I just know he affected me
An effect not unlike his art, I believe."
The service starts and we are in the know.
He had so much to say but more to show, and ain't that true of life?
So we weep for a person who lived at great cost,
Yet we barely knew his powers till we sensed what we had lost.

A friend and I in a museum room,
She says, "Look at Mark Rothko's side
Did you know about his suicide?
Some folks were born with a foot in the grave, but not me of course,"
And she smiles as if to say we're in the know
Then she names a coffee place where we can go, uptown.
Now the painting is desperate, but the crowds wash away
In a world of kind pedestrians who've seen enough today. 

-- Dar Williams, "Mark Rothko Song", _The Honesty Room_