François Alfred Delobbe, French
Friday is National Wheat Sifting Day. Mark Your Colanders!, 1882
Oil on canvas
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MASTERPIECE #3232
Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (archived if necessary), here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// Amélie is a French Woman Sifting
wheat from chaff with the sieve she is lifting.
Golden grains will be sold.
(She would say they are gold,
if she knew the first thing about grifting.)
/// As she stood tall upon a wood bench,
heavy sieve held tight in her firm clench,
she now wondered how many,
(if she’s lucky, not any),
buyers know “Rumplestiltskin” in French.
/// She was pondering how she’d “explain”
that her sifter threshed gold dust not grain.
All day long, as she sifted,
Amélie’s thoughts had drifted,
but the task was too hard on her brain.
/// She would have to appeal to the greed
of the people who bought grain and seed.
If some real gold was found
in her golden wheat mound,
then the scam just might work, yes indeed.
/// Amélie had no way to obtain
any gold dust to plant in her grain.
Her magnificent scheme
was a foolish pipe-dream.
(She’s so bored that she’s now barely sane.)
/// She now thought of the wheat gains which pass
through her sieve to a tarp on the grass.
They streamed down, falling straight
at about the same rate.
Might some pay for a live hourglass?
/// Clearly now, anybody could see:
Money problems plague poor Amélie.
Threshing won’t make her wealthy,
(and inhaled dust’s unhealthy),
so she’s charging Delobbe a high fee.
/// She’s a widow who winnows. We know
that she can’t when the wind starts to blow.
For the slightest small gust
scatters grain in the dust,
(which can only be gleaned by a crow).
/// Widow winnowed the wheat from the chaff
to get grain on the Preacher’s behalf.
He repaid with some lovin’
and a bun in her oven.
Now the Devil has had the last laugh.