October-November 2025
Portrait of the Artist Tatyana Spiridonovna Lyubatovich
By Konstantin Korovin
Distinction is the rouge
of curiosity
That the sleeve may not mistake
for the dirty leaf
But would be silk, unlike the ilk
of worms
But how you grip that book, you know
Does hold down that metronome
You’ve gripped the spine like a stone to kill
Ere you leap down from your sill
Civility ripens when it thinks
of its parents
Who danced down to streams
no bows on elbows
Blush, but still your civility
mightn’t mind so much
Have they yet cut youth from your eye?
Have they yet stitched you at their great price?
Distinction makes no distinction, yes, true
But then, please, step down out of their view
Written 12/08/2025
Boulevard de Clichy
By Vincent van Gogh
When twilight blushes the Boulevard de Clichy
And kicks up kaleidoscope colours in sheaves
That our world might become a known beauty
Then I long to cut these corners
To confine these colours on lined planes’ borders
Written 24/02/2025
Bay of Marseille, seen from L’Estaque
By Paul Cézzane
Horizons aren’t, though, really
Are they?
More modulation than graduation
Collage, not curve
Fabrics hemmed to quilts
Laid out there on the bed
Astronauts might peg this scene
To space to find
It folding like the space flag
I can’t deny plain dynamism
But unpicking this stitching
Would be interesting
Written 21/06/2025
Aristide Bruant at His Cabaret
By Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
What holds in both eye and cloak
Bleeding wee tears and blood
It is the child
In twisted smiles
Soon to be breathed in the smoke
Where goes he who is turned about
And prouder with every step
To the stage! To the stage!
To silhouette the page
To be cut from the air somehow
Where have the shadows gone
Or do brims now skim light’s milk
When gold turns cold
These shadows all fold
And my coldness, sure I have donned
Written 2/08/2025
At the Academy Dacha
By Ilya Repin
These wee scenes,
These tragedies that
They take from us
By paint and brush
In their shade
Where they guess
At the sweet camaraderie
That’s in these messes
The steady growth
Of bowed-head lessons
We have passed their plain tableau
And know for ourselves the greater parts,
Roles in sense and transcendence
Apart to analyse all eyes in life
And know a boy by the shape of his hat
His mother by her son’s shape
And forlorn all who are still and small
And drawn
Pity for those poor paralysed
Who we see prowling their cage eyes
But we are seeing their eyes less
And more we see their mottled canvas
‘I alone can know it,’ he said
And I suppose we must believe that
So we that can before them tread
To try to soothe them from their own heads
Petition king mind to have their spirits fed
Written 8/02/2025
Mrs Chase in Prospect Park
By William Merritt Chase
Mrs Chase has quit her race
She’s resting in these reeds
Watching the frogs in their hopping
As if she were their queen
Her colours all went
She lost all her bets
She’s parked her prospects
And Mrs Chase quit the race
In murky lakes she radiates
Illuminates their nests
Reveals all the silty deals
That bubble up in regret
Mrs Chase has found her place
Reclining in the vines
Where she shines like a great divine
Despite her manner plain
Written 9/04/2025
In the Meadow
By Gaetano Previati
I have heard it mentioned
In treasured memory
An easy meadow
Brittle like flint
That those that go there
With their weary spirits
Soon discovery they
Fade with the wind
For that I long
To ease my going
To have no shoulders
Pulling me down
For now I sit here
With my thinking seeping
My eyes grow numb
My mind like a town
I’ve often painted
On my closed eyelids
Grass blades like soldiers
Skies as scarves
Then something will stir me
Some myth or some melody
Compel me to labour
And my meadows pass
And when I strain
In returning at evening
My paradise
Has left me poor
Then I turn
To those sitting ‘round me
And know I’m lost from them
Between friendship and lore
I have heard them mentioned
These names of great travellers
Who’ve sent from the arbour
Find meadows so pure
It seems such a fine thing
To rest in the meadow
But I can’t see it clearly
And I’m no longer sure
Now might my feet fail
Now may my chest give
Ease out my thoughts
Untie all my cares
If you should find
Your way to my meadow
Send back for my body
I know not to where
Written 24/08/2025