Me, Brain, and Heart in Love’s Palette

Shravana Ganga

Is the brain a painter? Or a magician? How do I find it?

The world is colourful...
The heart sings,
You are in love.
The brain says.

In the spectrum of love,
The colour palette varies along,
As the light paints the colours
From violet to red,
I pick the colours in roses,
And sing, The world is colourful…

Violet roses paint the enchantment,
Red roses sing the song of love,
The brain adds the colour to my palette,
Growing the spectrum of colours.

Picking the pink,
Love is graceful, I sing

World is colourful, I shout,
There is no pink in the world,
Laughs back the brain,
Thank me for the pink,
I blend and perceive red and blue light,
Into the lovely pink you adore, it taunts.

Were you painting the colours with light or
Bonding with the lover?
I get angry with the brain.
I would paint the world myself,
But who would bond the thoughts with the lover's brain?

Heart, what are you up to? I ask,
To bond the emotions with the lover's heart.
I'm in love, dancing in love,
Beating in love, it sings back to me.

How do I trust them for the colours
That would never fade?
Brain says it paints for me.
Is it the painter, I ask again and again.
I'm a magician, creating the colours
You are in love with, says the brain.
I stare at my canvas of life with paints in hand.

The Science

The poem is inspired by how the brain perceives light, making our world colourful. The perception and reality of light diverge. Some colours, known as spectral colours, arise from perceiving a single wavelength of light, such as red. However, many other familiar colours, termed non-spectral colours, emerge from the brain's synthesis of different wavelengths. For instance, unlike spectral colours, pink is not linked to a singular wavelength but rather arises from the brain's interpretation of combinations, like red and white or red and blue/violet wavelengths of light. This signifies that pink does not exist as a distinct colour or light in the external world; it is only created by our brains.

The Poet

Shravana Ganga (she/her) is an aspiring poet and fiction writer who lives in Bengaluru, in India. As well as writing poetry and fiction, she is into physics and astronomy and working as a science communicator at Param Innovation. Her works can be found online, in Indian apps like pratilipi and yourquote. She writes in English and the regional language Kannada.

Next poem: Morning at the Painted Wall by Marilyn Wolf