#1032 - four little ekphrastics at the Art Gallery of NSW

 

3.xi.22

1032

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four little ekphrastics at the Art Gallery of NSW

 

take this road

ekphrastic for Grace Crowley’s 1947 ‘Abstract’

 

and be the vanishing

call colours to an afternoon

layers lap for meadow, sea

 

so much perimeter

there’s hatch through which

and lift gone down

 

I cannot see any way to escape

I can’t see anyone here

 

 

 

jazz fracture

ekphrastic for Grace Crowley’s 1953 ‘Abstract’

 

the sun

the afternoon

the evening

shadows of forms lost

 

pyramid

arrow

these few roads

leading out

 

overlapping in a list

we shall not speak of colour

but everything is clear

 

 

 

this one is sending up signals

ekphrastic for Kandinsky’s 1913 ‘study for painting with white border’

 

careless stains

frayed brush ends

 

light limbs and the heart’s a sea

 

nothing here but

 

all these stairs of a day

trees mountain it behind

 

some houses in the far

 

nothing to see here

 

 

 

 

ekphrastic for Ben Nicholson’s 1946 ‘Still Life’ (Alice through the Looking-glass)

 

of course she was never there

the memory is sketchy

more patches of moon and afternoon

some trumpets, an ear, a tap

all suggested

 

beakers from the other book

and some strange left moustache

 

all of this from itch

just a single square

 

a scratching, swoop

dense patching

 

had been perhaps among the nameless

Alice wasn’t there