Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries-De-La-Mer (On Van Gogh's painting) - Jude Goodwin

One of these boats carried Mary,
    put to sea by the Romans,
    the crying woman, hands wrapped with rags
    that smell of myrrh. And a tomb angel
    guards the beach. All the fishers have fled in fear
    except the one who stayed to spread his cloak
    over the water. For the women
    in the boat, no sail, no paddles.
    And the mourning Mary. Miracles,
    she tells him, are untouchable.
    

The fisher guides her hand
    to the red boat's prow,
    the old wood thick
    with loving paint. Hold fast
    mother, he says
    and the women are gone.
    

Flat sea. Four boats
    returned to shore. Curdled cod's breath
    sky. A yellow mast, yellow grass.
    Some kind of large grey wing
    floating in the water,
    washing up against the rock.

After La Siesta (On Van Gogh's Painting) - MR James

(Subject's perspective)    

    Morning's hard labour in field done,
    we lie down, he and I, sickles and shoes
    shed for a spell. High noon sun
    bears down from cloudless sky
    while cicadas shriek a lullaby.
    We shelter in haystack's shadow,
    deep in black sleep drawn
    no sooner than head hits straw,
    its sweet smell melding with earth,
    dung, fresh cut grain, and sweat. I dream
    not of the reaping behind us,
    or before us upon rising.

    
(Painter's perspective)    

They say I said, "No blue
    without yellow, without orange."
    Perhaps I did once, but here
    on this day, who can deny
    such shades of distinction?
    

As surely as the sky wears violet-blue,
    her sun irradiates the field beneath
    in gold - labourers need respite
    from its hot bright hue,
    their garb more gorgeous
    for its drab simplicity,
    toil-polished tools nearby
    mirroring the pair's unwitting harmony.

    

How I long to lie with them,
    share rough pleasure after pure toil,
    bones and muscles aching
    earn a measure of relief
    on wakening.
    

This painter, for all his wealth of oil,
    finds no rest on canvas,
    no stillness in his landscape,
    no reprieve but the fevered glow
    of brushstroke.

Christina of Denmark (On Holbein's Painting) - Josie Turner

 

The Queen must be beautiful, I understand.
    Even a candidate must have qualities
    not insulting to the throne. The King's hand
    discriminates. I've watched it hovering
    over this canvas or that, assessing
    fearful calculated veracity.

    

I made her beautiful, to be worth the trip.
    It worked - the likeness endures,
    clear of cast and sensuous of lip;
    my warnings heeded. The court is wise.
    

The girl's writhing hands and very shadow advise
    of my three hours bent to her allure.

    The sable collar of her mourning coat
    lolls like a noose, its falling swags
    disguise her form, my lady floats
    across the vermilion floor (I stood her
    on two books). Her smile recurs.
    

One husband down, gloves twisted to wet rags,

    eyes that never leave me, sardonic
    brow that never falls, a face
    propped like a mask on a stiffened tunic -
    my silence as I knelt, Henry's silence,
    the caw of birds, the signalled violence -
    the blackened edges of her exquisite lace.

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” Edna St Vincent Millay

 

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

Hamnavoe Market - George Mackay Brown

They drove to the Market with ringing pockets.

Folster found a girl

Who put wounds on his face and throat,
Small and diagonal, like red doves.

Johnston stood beside the barrel.
All day he stood there.
He woke in a ditch, his mouth full of ashes.

Grieve bought a balloon and a goldfish.
He swung through the air.
He fired shotguns, rolled pennies, ate sweet fog from a stick.

Heddle was at the Market also.
I know nothing of his activities.
He is and always was a quiet man.

Garson fought three rounds with a negro boxer,
And received thirty shillings,
Much applause, and an eye loaded with thunder.

Where did they find Flett?
They found him in a brazen circle,
All flame and blood, a new Salvationist.

A gypsy saw in the hand of Halcro
Great strolling herds, harvests, a proud woman.
He wintered in the poorhouse.

They drove home from the Market under the stars
Except for Johnston
Who lay in a ditch, his mouth full of dying fires.

The Dacca Gauzes - Agha Shahid Ali

Those transparent Dacca gauzes
known as woven air, running
water, evening dew:

a dead art now, dead over
a hundred years. "No one
now knows," my grandmother says,

"what it was to wear
or touch that cloth." She wore
it once, an heirloom sari from

her mother's dowry, proved
genuine when it was pulled, all
six yards, through a ring.

Years later when it tore,
many handkerchiefs embroidered
with gold-thread paisleys

were distributed among
the nieces and daughters-in-law.
Those too now lost.

In history we learned: the hands
of weavers were amputated,
the looms of Bengal silenced,

and the cotton shipped raw
by the British to England.
History of little use to her,

my grandmother just says
how the muslins of today
seem so coarse and that only

in autumn, should one wake up
at dawn to pray, can one
feel that same texture again.

One morning, she says, the air
was dew-starched: she pulled
it absently through her ring.

Letter to a Friend - Frida Kahlo

"Leaving is not enough; 

you must

stay gone,

Train your heart

like a dog,

Change the locks,

even on the house he’s never

visited,

You lucky, lucky girl,

You have an apartment

just your size, 

a bathtub full of tea,

a heart the size of Arizona, 

but not nearly

so arid,

Don't wish away your cracked past, 

your crooked toes, 

your problems are papier mache puppets,

you made or bought,

because the vendor at the market was so compelling,

you just had to have them,

you had to have him,

and you did,

And now you pull down

the bridge between your houses,

you make him call before

he visits,

make the first bottle you consume

in this place a relic,

Place it on whatever altar you fashion

with a knife and five cranberries,

don’t lose too much weight,

stupid girls are always trying

to disappear as revenge,

and you are not stupid,

You loved a man with more hands than a parade

of beggars, 

and here you stand,

Heart like a four-post bed,

heart like a canvas,

heart leaking something so strong

they can smell it in the street.”

This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Daisies - Louise Glück

 

Go ahead: say what you're thinking. The garden is not the real world. Machines are the real world. Say frankly what any fool could read in your face: it makes sense to avoid us, to resist nostalgia. It is not modern enough, the sound the wind makes stirring a meadow of daisies: the mind cannot shine following it. And the mind wants to shine, plainly, as machines shine, and not grow deep, as, for example, roots. It is very touching, all the same, to see you cautiously approaching the meadow's border in early morning, when no one could possibly be watching you. They longer you stand at the edge, the more nervous you seem. No one wants to hear impressions of the natural world: you will be laughed at again; scorn will be piled on you. As for what you're actually hearing this morning: think twice before you tell anyone what was said in this field and by whom. 

The Peace of Wild Things​ - Wendell Berry

"When despair for the world grows in me 
and I wake in the night at the least sound 
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, 
I go and lie down where the wood drake 
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds 
I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with forethought 
of grief. I come into the presence of still water. 
And I feel above me the day-blind stars 
waiting with their light. For a time 
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

​

“Epigram from the French” Alexander Pope (1732)

Sir, I admit your general rule,

That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

"somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond" e. e. cummings

 somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" Edward Lear

 The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea

   In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
   And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
   What a beautiful Pussy you are,
            You are,
            You are!
   What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,
   How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh! let us be married; too long we have tarried,
   But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
   With a ring at the end of his nose,
            His nose,
            His nose,
   With a ring at the end of his nose. 

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
   By the turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
   They danced by the light of the moon,
            The moon,
            The moon,
   They danced by the light of the moon.

"On Pain" Khalil Gibran

 And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.

     And he said:
     Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
     Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
     And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
     And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
     And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

     Much of your pain is self-chosen.
     It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
     Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
     For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
     And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. 

"won’t you celebrate with me" Lucille Clayton

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

"Long Distance" Tony Harrison (1937)

Though my mother was already two years dead

Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,

put hot water bottles her side of the bed

and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in.  You had to phone.

He'd put you off an hour to give him time

to clear away her things and look alone

as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief

though sure that very soon he'd hear her key

scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.

He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.