1
Here’s a sunny card to cheer up your hospital room.
Kate’s Flowers c. 1936 by Winifred Nicholson
So glad you’ve got your own room
And can therefore do a bit more of what you want to.
Take it easy though!
This painting is not what it seems.
Taking the long long look
that Jeanette Winterson recommends
there’s this abundance of orange
and its close friend yellow:
plenty and laughter
joining hands with
wisdom and calm.
Sometimes known as Kate’s Bunch
It’s an oil on plywood,
painted in Paris.
Two vases, daffodils and lilies,
the latter’s petals fallen on
a polished table, mahogany possibly,
and spread about by a gust of wind,
or perhaps a passing child. Kate
her first born, her miracle child
just seven when this painting was made.
2
There, sitting in front of us
in the stalls in the Town Hall,
was Stockhausen himself,
resplendent in the orange jumper
he always seemed to wear
in the last years of his life.
Because he invariably wore
white shirts and white jeans
an orange jumper, scarf
and jacket seemed sensible
garb for an angel from Sirius,
particularly when working in his garden.
At a concert he’d been known
to sport a purple scarf.
Orange and purple:
two colours that defy rhyme
but clearly not the reason
of this genius from another planet.
3
This Orange is Ecstatic.
Its theme of six quick notes,
almost never leaves the music.
Composer Michael Torke
slows it down, smooths it out,
it’s so quick and catchy
momentum builds up quickly;
it simply sounds (almost) unstoppable.
It sure is! Such fun,
and so good to listen to
because you never loose the thread.
Ok, the tune cycles round your head
but the instruments change
and there’s lots of extra tunes
playing away like good buddies.
This is music you can’t help smiling to.
It’s Ecstatic and Orange.
4
Did you know there’s a Music of Colour?
It is so new that few people,
except those who are creating it,
are aware that it exists.
At all.
Colour has seven degrees
of depth intensity.
With Orange it's
Alabaster
Apricot
Fire
Fox
Copper
Tobacco
Black coffee
Colour has seven degrees
between the shade of its hue
to its neutralization.
With orange it's
flame
sand
ochre
bistre
fawn
dun
mud
Oh Winifred, have you any idea
of the song your colours sing?
How orange and yellow
and blue and white
and almost purple
with a little green
make music become a picture.
5
I bought some orange tights! X
Oh Gosh! X
I’m not wearing them though . . . X
There’s a time and place for orange tights . . .
wait for (poetic) instructions please . . . X
Curiouser and curiouser . . . X
You see I bought this frock
in a charity shop.
Folly green and Pointing white
it was pleasantly patterned,
though a small fourteen,
and knowing he’d like it
I put it on one night
before we went to bed.
And he said:
‘You know it would be just right
with a pair of orange tights.’
And so it is.
Just right.
6
Dearest,
don’t let me touch you
yet, above the knee
where this warm colour
flows towards that centre
of your movements’ grace,
where lower limbs join
to kiss and stroke each inner thigh,
those quiet smooth planes of softest skin
that inviting so the caress of a hand,
daring so the intimate touch of a cheek.
Let orange keep you close to the possibility of passion
to the glow of your beauty’s length and line
where the firmness of your standing self
will shine out and speak of purpose
and of love’s sweet gift.
Composers often use quotation and/or sampling. In these six poems I've used short extracts variously from a get well card, a newspaper article, an Internet review, an essay by an artist and a text exchange. These extracts are always marked in italics.