New poem
Since I seem to be doing quite a few of these lately, here’s another painting poem – 90% finished just standing in front of the picture.
A Married Couple in the Szépmuvészeti Múzeum
A Van Dyck portrait all in black
– a married couple, starched and ruffed,
seated together, the chair back
backdropping their rich sombre stuff.
No special beauty in their faces,
but oh how tenderly each hand
is rendered against cuffs and laces:
clasped fingers, and the wedding band.
New poem
And here’s the poem inspired by that picture – actually, the painting was in restauro, exactly as described:
Brera Pieta
Bellini’s Pieta behind sheet glass,
clamped to the gantry girders’ clean brushed steel
under white tube lights’ chill denatured glare,
suspended in a straddle carrier
and surrounded by all the instruments
of restoration, ladders, tongs and sponge.
Two huge fluorescent green extractor ducts –
articulated Ernst elephant trunks –
on either side, with goggling loups on stalks:
the hideous apparatus of remorse
striking cold attitudes in grim dumb show
of the lamenters’ outflung members, flanks
the limp form on the canvas stretcher frame
supported by a mother’s tenderness,
soft velvety reds and blues, ivory skin
so delicately rendered, collar bones
of a dead god upheld in the slack flesh
across the central axis that aligns
the nail holes that heal and make us whole.
In Milan
Flew down to Milan for two days for a conference. It’s given me time to go see the works at the Brera, among other things, including this one:
Autumn colours
Since I only have a shit camera right now, I thought I’d post this instead. There’s these amazing trees across the valley. Their leaves are falling fast. The ground around is carpeted with them. The outer leaves at the branch ends are orange and pink, and nearer the trunk the leaves are a paler brighter yellow, and you get exactly the same pattern carried over onto the ground beneath. It looks just like the inside of a cut peach.
[Top]New poem
Hide and Raven
Follow the raven to the glade
down the trail
from the hide where it lurked
alert for carrion
– now silhouetted black
against sun-dappled foliage,
a miniature guard tower.
The rush of air under dark wings
as it backtracks
above the forest canopy
sounds like breathless fugitives
or panting hounds.
The ravens croak, each to each,
and all around, water drops
patter down through branches
and frosty air
that makes my exhalations smoke,
and, at the end of the forked path,
another mossed abandoned hide.
An unkindness of ravens flies
from the broken oak within
the Pauline convent’s ruins where
the blond wood cross shines in the sun.
New poem
Inspired by a Mackintosh banner bagpipe pibroche – I’ll post that up here soon.
Mackintosh Pibroche
Great pipe notes float like mists over Moy,
calling up wooded and empty glens
ringed by gnarled bare granite crags;
harled castles of my ancestors
still mirror glory in dark lochs
and shut yetts bar the ancient gates.
New poem
San Shek Wan
My bedroom has no curtains
to cordon where I lie,
but morning drapes the windows
with green, and clouds, and sky.
An eccentric erection in Pilisszentlelek
And I’m all for eccentric erections. But I have no idea what this one was for.
There it was, just standing in the forest on the hillside.
Autumn colours in Pilisszentlelek
Autumn comes earlier here in the hills. And unfortunately, my crap camera can’t do justice to the amazingly vivid saturated colours in the clear sunshine.
