This is one of those poems where I am not totally sure that I know what I am on about, but the feeling is something I know is right!
          This poems came about as a response to a prompt in the Poetry Group in Barcelona.  The theme was 'Colour' and I half remembered something, which may or may not be true, that one critic suggested that some of the colour combinations and choices in the paintings of Fernand Léger was due, in part to colour blindness.
          I too have partial colour blindness, a confusion between red and green which, disconcertingly seems to vary in intensity for no obvious reason.  So, I felt some fellow feeling for the artist, and used what I think is true to talk about perception - which I suppose fits with the subject!
          I like the title Autocrat of Shades and I like the feeling in the last stanza, even if I am not absolutely sure what it means!
          I wonder what my feelings about this poem will be in another week or so?  Time will tell.

Colour

The painter Léger’s life was

colour everyday – and yet, they say,

the man himself was colour blind!

There’s no official test for artists

like the circle of small spots

where you can see a ‘9’

and I see ‘17’ –

                       that tells us what?

I touch the grass that is, for

me, as green as my reality.

I speak as Autocrat of Shades!

I say that my eyes

and that your eyes

are the grass –

and Léger’s paintings too.

I vividly remember those colourful circular charts that we were given during one day of fairly exhaustive (and obtrusive) medical tests in school.  I'm not sure that I have the numbers right, but I plead poetic licence!