Monday, 16 November 2020

#320 - Heidelberg gold - ekphrastic for Arthur Streeton

 



17.xi.20

320

Heidelberg gold

a Streeton set ekphrastic

(draft poem framed up with mainly his titles and notes)

 

gorse bloom light leaning colour

crawling out from under canvas

an image of how hard it is

 

on a fire of such strokes

the billy steaming

 

all plein air

and afternoon light

 

in hunger enduring

a little loan

to keep me going?

 

so start with

road ridden out

a horse drawn moon

warm loving sun

 

roads lead hills and far

 

summer golden

a sunprint on the canvas sky

 

there are seas from the deep

one is to discover

worlds from this end

 

easel set upon the moment

there’s a day drawn in

still lives by more than name

 

the jetty in steam

ferry of a dog leapt on

and one day won’t come home

 

Sydney - his ‘passionfruit and poetry’

deep green blue

rare phosphorescence

and a wonderful gulf

 

he’s gone in the decade before I arrive

that harbour yet remains

clouds come

 

then Cairo bright

to wadi gone

the Grand Canal

 

come back and back again

 

a staircase stood in the fallen house

ruins of a war shown through

 

a camouflage return now

in the land of the golden fleece

 

the vanishing forest 1934

Sherbroke, the picture of ringbarking

the digger and his log

the sylvan dam

 

pictures of the rain as well

 

he is always calling the colours by name

blue and gold - God’s palette here

 

bronze green gums

purple shadows

the purple noon’s transparent light

deep blue azure of heaven

 

fire’s on

a wash of rocks

and death comes out

little figure hardly seen

flat among the verticals

 

hard truths

now Toorak

tea’s served

a garden last of flowers

a telegram from the king

thus empire dubbed

 

still glides the stream and shall forever

that was Wordsworth, don’t you know
















































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