Route tournante
Cézanne has placed
a surly easel
in what as yet
does not exist.
He knows the
geology of absence,
layer upon layer,
so well that already
the naked in the
canvas becomes fully authentic.
The road that
winds in last year’s grass
is still only a
curve in the mind,
stolen from an
ancient Chinese.
It runs up into a
soiled chapter
that he has
scraped off with his knife –
you were never
there!
Start with the
shadows
and work in
towards the brighter centre.
The blue-grey can
tempt back a field.
Like his life this
treacherous year:
the throbbing foot
that refuses to heal
he may possibly
have to part with.
At the same time
the road that insists, once more –
what a thirst for
sun!
Among the women in
dark headcloths
his mother moves,
bent in grief for one dead.
When the others
have disappeared round the bend,
she is on an
errand,
still there like a
misty blue over the road.
So hard to endure
any other contact –
It is colour that
can make contact with the world.
He has certainly
mentioned the logic. And the old woman.
But such as
approximate values.
No theory can
catch hold of
the raging forces
within things.
Only a grip of
colours
can force
‘reality’ to make a reply.
Blotch upon
blotch, a stubborn scale
that lifts out a
town from the town:
gables, a church
tower, a possible road
and a fugue of
swallows.
Each house is
uninhabited: waiting
for the one with
strength enough to return.
A day is a year.
Like his life –
Took decades to
realise that vegetation is blue.
And now in just a
few minutes he has managed
to paint the sound
of bells.
The brush drops.
The canvas has
forced into existence a landscape
in what simply
calls itself landscape.
And the road
really winds.
Every second has a
moist gleam
that no one could
see before.
He stands with his
throbbing pain
in last year’s
suddenly fresh grass.
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