January-February 2026

Chestnut Trees at Louveciennes

By Camille Pissarro

Find Camille’s sight
Hear his clad feet
Warm where they wheel
Place with stiff leaves
‘Neath yellowed sky

Here, wiry boughs
Cast grim shade moulds
Down to the snow
In vain to hold
Some icy ground

Snow brighter lies
On that old keep’s
Slate, drowned in sleet,
Stack still in sleep
Must waken nigh

For over here
Waits this wrapped pair
Whose one faint plan
Rests on their prayer
To Frostbite’s Fear

Here, rubble fence
Long has it stood
Storing up wounds
In its damp wood
It shatters thence

Now, hurry, fly
In to thy peace
To stones’ warmth steal
At home are thee
In Builder’s might

Though bricks feel tight
Here ye are free,
Not frost’s dark meal
But for to sleep
This winter night
To dawning fire

Written 20/12/2025

Mr. and Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes

By Cecilia Beaux

Ye weevils of your oaken world
Of wooden legs and woollen rugs
Of writing and of being writ,
The shadows from your hallway’s corners
Are stirring thick with thorns and thistles

Silk is this fine thing
Wood is since refined
And often I have found
That those who clothe in both
Are founded on some same notion
Of a world cut down and made oaken

Written 30/12/2025

The Beach of Berck

By Eugene Boudin

Days of paste have always come
When the winds run low
The clouds conglomerate
The dunes grow weeds
The sea gets filled like stubble
Trouble is within them all

Though for now we walk,
In some straightforward way
As if we’d walk right out to sea
And keep on up
To the clouds
And ever painted be

Written 6/12/2025

Girl with Fan

By Renoir Pierre-Auguste

There’s a certain colour of ocean
Known just to one age
Like lapis lazuli in clouds dark
Like a pond’s shadows in the park
It dyes when the child
Has shed their eyes’ film
To see beauty by reality
In a clearer sense
But just for when they’ve not
Been looking too long

Written 21/12/2025

Seascape - Storm

By Claude Monet

Whereupon their grey sail met
With grey skies, when white
Clouds were more in water’s palms
Than in the above them
And, love them,
They purred at the hull
And made pawing at the rail
Until lapping turned gnawing
Light heavens into hell

Knell, chief Knell,
Did you hold?
Did you wait at the shore
Your breath all baited
Until the churn abated
And your sea’s green malady,
So steep, ceasing its seep
That weak, peaking, and bleak
Constitution, had run its course
Great Knell, shore was your
Duty held?

Now, away from the shore,
From their lifeline’s long chore, and
All their hopes hung,
‘Twixt anchor and sail
Do not fail, boys
Pray, don’t you fail

Written 1/02/2026

Midday on the Beach

By William Orpen

I’ve felt the breeze that rides ashore
Many times I know
Woven tapestries in the sand
When the Sun has made them glow
Never have I had to stay
Now I cannot go
Hear the waves dance against the distance
Know your patterns dance upon the sand

Brought yourself down to the beach
With a parasol for shade
Laid down with your child
In the nest that you have made
Born here is a peace you’ve borne
From dawn until midday
Hear the waves dance against the distance
Know your patterns dance upon the sand

Written 11/01/2026

Walk on the Beach

By Joaquín Sorolla

They walk against the blue belt,
Lady True and sister Lie,
The latter under sweeping veil,
The elder has a dancing train
And both have dressed in white

Any bonny symmetry
Tells but Truth is deemed worth mimicry

When they were thirteen, two
Silks were laid on sand for them
Before young Truth could her claim
Little Lie had clambered the curtain
So the sash was worn the better

And, bonny mimicry – Ha!
I ask thee, which sister via veil was seen

In years to come beneath their Sun
A parasol came to the paler soul
While tanned Truth turned to bronze
And some thought bronze a metal soft and
So shaded ivory the better was known

Little tooth surpassing
Weep! Your suitors pray her passing

Ever the elder walked ahead
Of lolling parasol and coat
Emerald ebbed up from the waves
To catch in their lengths of lace
Flash in veil behind, hold Truth’s shoulders tight

Bonny shaded lady,
Make the lace go plainly

Now has Truth a grey, graven chin
Now her thoughts a braided way
Counting all her sister’s steps and
On what lives of their affection
To settle in some sober way

Truth has shoes to tread wet sand
Lie’s, in tides, would bear better in hand

They walk against the blue belt
One laden
One as lace
A veil and train
Split
Made twain
Not in any even way
Know them by their graces

Any bonny symmetery
Means Truth must needs mockery

Written 30/01/2026

I lock my door upon myself

By Fernand Khnopff

Upon this hand that once has gone lightly
Over the stones of my native city,
Upon skin papyrus and pale eye,
Dried as the reed from Egypt’s Nile,
Upon some red hood that’s hounded my days
The smother and blaze that surrounds this face
Upon Venus bound on my sinister hand,
That Vene, Vidi, Vici band,
Upon two founts from my face coming grey
Out past the outcrops to sue the world fade,

Upon flowers died brown and Hermes’s bright wing
Upon crackling prayer, a dull, low, dull din
Upon that starry night that lights on my cloth
Upon this lie that synthesis so doth
Upon these walls that look like weak croak
Upon old paint, and paint upon oak
Upon the world like a tea stain out there
Upon a ruined cloth, worse unused than it bland
Upon the posts that don’t move but to beat
Upon their tall hearts, as soiled as feet

I lock my door upon it all
And all of it in place
I’ve locked it; look, I’ve locked it
I’m waiting now to fade

Written 2/02/2026