#872 - chiaroscuro

 

25.v.22

872 

3.145

chiaroscuro

ekphrastic for Julian Ashton’s 1902  ‘The Awakening’

in the Hinton Collection at NERAM

arisen from pillows to clutch 

we’ve not had words yet either 

but rush of blood to blush

and wonder

call empire in the impulse 

a muse, a caryatid

are you vulnerable to night, to dreams?

let me ask you from the dark

and namelessly

nor was I ever here

word like superb

but see

white of bite, dishevel 

it must be mere suggestion 

this lust lit innocence

draped to reveal

hands and feet are the hardest things

come to the subject by palette and brush

how opportunity knocks

at the animal wilds here 

a  drapery of loosening 

as if to where the woods may ring

motive, means and what’s the third thing?

it was a different age 

when we brought the darkness out 

a heart, is it to heart?

lips part

there’s the savage left paw, deformed

shows what he been done?

what she could do?  

does it trouble you?

something here remains undisclosed 

and time rewrites a story

let me ask you, artist

what is it I might provide?

one startles at

propriety! concupiscence

my distance from the truth

here’s what we don’t know

and I must never tell 

the object of desire is a lamp 

and casts this golden light 

it’s only by way of hint we rouse 

to ever say she asked