July 2025
The Magpie
By Claude Monet
Weep not for his solitude
Upon the tender gate
His only perch of solace
When Winter’s seed berates
Take no distaste from his plumage
Though it blemishes the snow
From gate by unseen path
Is all that magpie’s home
Have no pity for his isolation
Though it’s the wasteland he flies
For ever the air shares counsel
His saviour as the skies
Written 26/02/2025
The Circus
By Georges Seurat
Come all to her one
Come watch her fly
See her crest over chaos
See her risk all her life
Watch her give what she’s given
From now ‘til she dies
Just to take for a moment
Some twenty people’s eyes
See her close her eyes
Watch her feel like a bird
With you thousand common people
Tepid up at her
And the noise it dies down
To a gentle murmur
Saying ‘Look how many are here
Who wish they were her.’
She’s a million little tricks
On her face
And a thousand shining suns
On her leotard
And twenty amused
In her audience
And a thousand shining suns
On her leotard
Written 3/02/2025
Beach in Heist
By Georges Lemmen
We’ve a world of dragon spines
That rise up in beaches
And curl up on the shore
We’ve a world of vertebrae
Under the waves and sands
Rippled and risen by slumbered breaths
We’ve a world of dragon dreams
Rheem of dulled fire unrolling the sky
And hazy shapes fly for filling it
We’ve a world of foreign worlds
As we learn between them
They eye us
Written 13/04/2025
The Bleaching Grounds
By Max Liebermann
Rosy cheeks and cotton ground
Olden trees and tubs so round
Hens strut out their clucking sounds
Blistered hands again
A great brick wall for feeling home
A rolling sky for to be known
Grasses that your mothers wove
Daughter, don’t squeeze my finger tight
Brown skirts and boots scratched black
Rolled sleeves, hair matting caps
Thinner than a sewing tack
Too thin for bright ballgowns
We’ll sit underneath this canopy
Wonder how wide the world might be
Dream of corners we can never see
Get up and start again
Written 5/06/2025
The Garden at the Asylum at Saint-Rémy
By Vincent van Gogh
I clutch the trunks’ edges
In their cut glimpses
Above by myriad leafy shadows
Below by the waving, woven grasses
And path like a pool
With shadows encircling
Swirling and churning
And blended banks
Of hegemonic hemp
Lost distinction
I clutch the trunks
Written 23/12/2024
A Bar at the Folies-Bergere
By Édouard Manet
Surrounded by crystal
And high-lip bristle
With limp witty pistols
Behind these bright bars
Behind the bland eyes
Lies a mind devising
A world of her own
Wherein silence happens
Written 17/05/2025
Westminster
By Giuseppe de Nittis
The great key is fallen.
It lies shrouded.
It lies graven with
Needles sprouting from girth.
Brick from river.
A cold, carved knife
In a cold, dark city
Smell the life
See the smoke
The hushed dawning, morning, mourning voices
The muttered rumblings
A city fumbling for the pitcher
Shy, Sun peers down
Over cloud, its sleeve
Down on smoggy democracy
With fresh air and
Smoke of the Sun’s own.
Written 13/12/2024