[you were]

"where love is a song settling in the night"

you were the softness of feathers
and the harsh cadence of grief,
you were the sky’s frail mists
and its glittering pools.
in the warm indigos of summer
i welcomed you home,
the sea with its engine pistons
played loud harmonics,
it wasn't the noise but quiet
i wanted most, the way i wanted you,
star silent, drifting like a boat.

[tonight]

tonight i can't write poetry,
a star is just a star

[shadows on my bones]

"when everything is washed out like faded jeans"

i thought i could stay alive
but there were shadows on my bones,
summer fell through my lips
and washed the colours from my shirt.
i became a lizard in the
dry heat.

the sky layered greys into
clouds, told me how
expressive it could be
and then turned white.
i wasn't going to argue
but i liked it better blue!

when your heart is
full of softness it gathers
the flowers of dusk.

the sea is so far from me
now, how can i remember
a wave or the bluster of
the wind?
i am as forgetful of
shape as foam, i am
as broken as driftwood,
i am the memory of
something that never was,
an impromptu impressionist
painting in ink.

[i've not written]

i've not written for a week.
i need to visualize, feed
on an image, grow out of
immense distance, slumber
on the rocks.
i need to paint a flower
in all its frailty, gather
the skies on the horizon.
until the bright lilies
have drowned me in their
white linens i will not feel whole.
gathering, gathering the world,
its moments stormy rooks.

[love poem]

"where love is a wave that splashes on the sand"

when a heart
loves
the stars surrender
to the heavens,
the moon catches her breath
and the avenues
of silence become
voice. i follow the
path to my love,
i die for him,
i live for him,
like a spartan
in the heat of battle,
like a flower in the
mist.

[summer tide]

the moon, shrunken, faint
as pencil, as if the wild nettles
of night carried her loads.
her glazes the raptures of
dancing stars.
her stencil mark a white crescent
leant on cloud.
the trees shudder in the
wind, break their promises,
forgive no one.  
the tide listens to her rhythms,
traps them in water, distils
her victories, unwraps the dark,
stretches it out.

[out of the night]

out of the night, the softening rain dripping
from leaves and memories hanging like stars
in a northern sky, everything sank to the sea,
sinking in night and song and silence.
everywhere was still, no climbing to the dawn,
no old ghost singing winter to the sky.
it was time to leave, time for the grey ghosts
to crumble, time for the rose beds to sleep.
the morning dew is the water's flowers,
the early frost is the marbling of the earth,
we're pushed to emptiness by the iron-hinged wind,
melt in caves where the shadows lie hid.
from your hair, the glistening drops of rain,
from the air, the flight of a bird,
terrible and black the dark clouds,
where the night utters vowels its voice full of stones,
and its breath an empty pail once filled
with water and the kiss of the moon.

[grey stone sky]

grey stone sky, ghost clouds crying to the wind,
remembering the distant wave.
the moon was the whitening mists of time,
was the quiver of a musical note,
her broad branches silver seas,
her caverns quiet visions of light.
i stride the shores of oblivion where
dark ages hide, where the ocean falls,
i capture infinite moons in my
mouth, capture something bright,
something of you that i bless,
something of you that grows out
of the dark, glimmering like a night frost,
midnight stars dipped in a clear lake
and as the surface gleams and reflects,
how the water ripples in little blue tides.

[i ask you]

i ask you how the water cries, how you hold
the tide, the light, the thin light glistening.
i ask you how you bury root and earth,
how you dress the wind, how you carry
clouds in your mouth, how you drift
out of morning's ghosts, sky full,
how you drift downstream taking
part of me with you. i ask and i ask.
why do you not answer me? tomorrow
stretches her wings, tomorrow with her
tremendous oceans of fire, her dark eyes
full of hope while part of me dies.
no furnace could burn like you burn,
every whisper the dark, the infinite dark,
and that little flame hovering like a bird
a paradise higher than stars.

[the ocean dreams]

the ocean dreams...
colours like burnt kisses,
the blue mist tangles the air.
the shore shook out its creases
like old linen, fell under
the tumbling wave.
i drank the silence,
walking where the moon,
carried along by the song
of a ripple, dipped
her feet in the foam,
dancing, dancing...
beneath her ivory tongue,
a glistening jewel,
her alabaster skin
night's whitest rose,
and where the stars
wrapped december in
ghosts and the
gleaming water was the
quietest echo of love,
i could no longer bear
to be alone, and my tears
were the wilderness
and how it grew inside me,
and everything i loved was there
the wave carrying the wind
and i felt alive, as joyful
as the silver shore, a dark-pooled
painting of you, a river-eyed song.

[sad, sad eyes]

winter fed us with blood-red berries and ice clouds,
our visible breath soon colder than our lips.
i did not want to see what you had seen,
could not grow out of those sad, sad eyes.
we fell into the calm wave of circumstance
and twilight hurried from us into the dark.
hurried away like the last drop of sunlight
purples the earth, dancing on the edge of the world.
do we wait, stone-heavy, for the last tendrils
of day to melt like ice?
the fearful cold breathes like a fog,
gathers its stars of voice and hill,
gathers memories and distant dreams,
lets us forget.
are you the ghost that lies on the hill
calling to me?
are you that ghost,
whose irons soften like cloud,
whose frozen leaf trembles on the branch
waiting to fall to the whispering land?
your eyes are from the past and yet
they follow like a cold wind blasts.
your eyes, everywhere your sad eyes,
biting like a frost.

[do you dream of me?]

my love, you wear silence like a coat
and i am left drifting like a far-out wave.
the wind tangles leaf and sky.
winter is barely noticed, the moon
is a ghost of forgotten flowers where
the night sings to the starry waters,
sings of our love. everything is sailing
like a ship in a bottle, a kaleidoscope  
of brightness, gothic hill and wildflower
ruin, flowing like a silvery stream.
do you dream of me? do you burn when
the night wraps you in her cloak and the moon
unwinds the waters of the seas?
do you dream of me?

[morning]

a bird slid into the wind's
bright paths, awoke
the sound of morning, the
only elegant sound. i sprinkled you
you with the roots of the rain and
with a song sweetened by
sunlight and although you were stunted
and your blue-blossom wings were broken,
and the very earth swam in dark
floods of tears, that little piece of
love was a kingdom as reachable
as your hand touching mine.

[song]

this was a song that lingers in caverns and
caves, scented by sea rose and anemone,
lost kingdoms where we dream of the sea.

this was a song like a whale shivering
through the water, diving into the
impossible dark, with its huge tail
waving, flag-like and star-hungry,
its skin the moon's lips, in a world
with no moonlight, no brightening pools,
and only echoes of a forgotten sun.

how deep do we dive, seals of ink
and overtures of unanswerable
dark? our eyes have been betrayed
many times and the water buries us
whole, takes us to the staccato rhythms
of a ghostly tide, takes us back to
a womb woman whose prayers lie
like whispers on the water, who tells
us to hush and we hear our mother's voice.

these are wild notes that press into the
waves, and i am frightened of this song,
it is dissonant and gathered from the
rivers of night, her tombs overgrown with
wild flowers and the bones of the sea,
and she cries for the lost,
for those that were taken from her,
and she will cry for all eternity
and her tears are like breath of ice.

[winter]

winter buries her flames,
buries whispers of river and leaf,

the sea wraps turquoise into bronze,
everything is full of white bones,

the sky is an illusion of clouds,
her petticoats blue rags,

the day is as heavy as a paperweight,
as brittle as a glass flower,

the light is as naked as the trees
gold could not be more cold,

the sunlight reflects in the snow,
her amber eyes gleam,

nothing flows, nothing flowers,
nothing flows, nothing flowers,

and your smile is the sun,
a ghost as faint as watercolour,

the brush dipped in daylight,
a little part of me.

[waiting]

i stood there waiting like a
nettle with the moon's forget-me-not
eyes, wild flowers overflowing
down the little paths, i was the flower that
no one wanted, a black companion
****.
my cherry mouth was built of
forgotten orchards and swallow's wings,
while my hair was blown by the indigo wind,
the moon tap, tap, tapping on the door.

the whiteness of the land, the colours of
winter and how her song arose out of
the dark, bearing my soul like the
earth rediscovered, glistening in the
light, drawn out of hollows, the shadows
driven back, with a dry root's crazy thirst
that left me longing for rain.
the poetry could not quite free itself
from my lips, dragged me down to
the earth where i staggered with
the lost and the weary. i tried to get back,
but all I could do was sink into the frozen waste.
no, the poetry would not free itself, and
still I waited but it didn't seem to matter
now because leaf and moon and the
frosting that covered my body had left
me like a pale ghost in the wilderness
and all I wanted to do was sink into

How fortunate
Our color blends unintentially,
Wildly with thoughts bleeding outside the lines what have we started: again

And again I stroke
And again you absorb
And again this easel-- summoned
And again your vellum-- softened

Perched on a stool,
Vibrant as mangos --ripening
I chose you, the spectrum
Unknown to most

The only museum I go to.

A Tale for the Mid-Winter Season after the Mural by Carl Larrson

On the shortest day I wake before our maids from the surrounding farms have converged on Sundborn. Greta lives with us so she will be asleep in that deep slumber only girls of her age seem to own. Her tiny room has barely more than a bed and a chest for her clothes. There is my first painting of her on the wall, little more a sketch, but she was entranced, at seeing herself so. To the household she is a maid who looks after me and my studio,  though she is a literate, intelligent girl, city-bred from Gamla Stan but from a poor home, a widowed mother, her late father a drunkard.  These were my roots, my beginning, exactly. But her eyes already see a world beyond Sundborn. She covets postcards from my distant friends: in Paris, London, Jean in South America, and will arrange them on my writing desk, sometimes take them to her room at night to dream in the candlelight. I think this summer I shall paint her, at my desk, reading my cards, or perhaps writing her own. The window will be open and a morning breeze will make the flowers on the desk tremble.

Karin sleeps too, a desperate sleep born of too much work and thought and interruption. These days before Christmas put a strain on her usually calm disposition. The responsibilities of our home, our life, the constant visitors, they weigh upon her, and dispel her private time. Time in her studio seems impossible. I often catch her poised to disappear from a family coming-together. She is here, and then gone, as if by magic. With the older children home from their distant schools, and Suzanne arrived from England just yesterday morning, they all cannot do without lengthy conferences. They know better than disturb me. Why do you think there is a window set into my studio door? So, if I am at my easel there should be no knock to disturb. There is another reason, but that is between Karin and I.

This was once a summer-only house, but over the years we have made it our whole-year home. There was much attention given to making it snug and warm. My architect replaced all the windows and all the doors and there is this straw insulation between the walls. Now, as I open the curtains around my bed, I can see my breath float out into the cool air. When, later, I descend to my studio, the stove, damped down against the night, when opened and raddled will soon warm the space. I shall draw back the heavy drapes and open the wooden shutters onto the dark land outside. Only then I will stand before my current painting: *Brita and the Sleigh.

Current!? I have been working on this painting intermittently for five years, and Brita is no longer the Brita of this picture, though I remember her then as yesterday. It is a picture of a winter journey for a six-year-old, only that journey is just across the yard to the washhouse. Snow, frost, birds gathered in the leafless trees, a sun dog in the sky, Brita pushing her empty sledge, wearing fur boots, Lisbeth’s old coat, and that black knitted hat made by old Anna. It is the nearest I have come to suggesting the outer landscape of this place. I bring it out every year at this time so I can check the light and the shadows against what I see now, not what I remember seeing then. But there will be a more pressing concern for me today, this shortest day.

Since my first thoughts for the final mural in my cycle for the Nationalmuseum I have always put this day aside, whatever I might be doing, wherever I may be. I pull out my first sketches, that book of imaginary tableaux filled in a day and a night in my tiny garden studio in Grez, thinking of home, of snow, the mid-winter, feeling the extraordinary power and shake of Adam of Bremen’s description of 10th C pre-Christian Uppsala, written to describe how barbaric and immoral were the practices and religion of the pagans, to defend the fragile position of the Christian church in Sweden at the time. But as I gaze at these rough beginnings made during those strange winter days in my rooms at the Hotel Chevilon, I feel myself that twenty-five year old discovering my artistic vision, abandoning oils for the flow and smudge of watercolour, and then, of course, Karin. We were part of the Swedish colony at Grez-sur-Loing. Karin lived with the ladies in Pension Laurent, but was every minute beside me until we found our own place, to be alone and be together, in a cupboard of a house by the river, in Marlotte.

Everyone who painted en-plein-air, writers, composers, they all flocked to Grez just south of Fontainebleau, to visit, sometimes to stay. I recall Strindberg writing to Karin after his first visit: It was as if there were no pronounced shadows, no hard lines, the air with its violet complexion is almost always misty; and I painting constantly, and against the style and medium of the time. How the French scoffed at my watercolours, but my work sold immediately in Stockholm. . . and Karin, tall, slim, Karin, my muse, my lover, my model, her boy-like figure lying naked (but for a hat) in the long grass outside my studio. We learned each other there, the technique of bodies in intimate closeness, the way of no words, the sharing of silent thoughts, together on those soft, damp winter days when our thoughts were of home, of Karin’s childhood home at Sundborn. I had no childhood thoughts I wanted to return to, but Karin, yes. That is why we are here now.

In Grez-sur-Loing, on a sullen December day, mist lying on the river, our garden dead to winter, we received a visitor, a Swedish writer and journalist travelling with a very young Italian, Mariano Fortuny, a painter living in Paris, and his mentor the Spaniard Egusquiza. There was a woman too who Karin took away, a Parisienne seamstress I think, Fortuny’s lover. Bayreuth and Wagner, Wagner, Wagner was all they could talk about. Of course Sweden has its own Nordic Mythology I ventured. But where is it? What is it? they cried, and there was laughter and more mulled wine, and then talk again of Wagner.

When the party left I realized there was something deep in my soul that had been woken by talk of the grandeur and scale of Wagner’s cocktail of German and Scandinavian myths and folk tales. For a day and night I sketched relentlessly, ransacking my memory for those old tales, drawing strong men and stalwart, flaxen-haired women in Nordic dress and ornament. But as a new day presented itself I closed my sketch book and let the matter drop until, years later, in a Stockholm bookshop I chanced upon a volume in Latin by Adam of Bremen, his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, the most famous source to pagan ritual practice in Sweden. That cold winter afternoon in Grez returned to me and I felt, as I had then, something stir within me, something missing from my comfortable world of images of home and farm, family and the country life.

Back in Sundborn this little volume printed in the 18th C lay on my desk like a question mark without a sentence. My Latin was only sufficient to get a gist, but the gist was enough. Here was the story of the palace of Uppsala, the great centre of the pre-Christian pagan cults that brought us Odin and Freyr. I sought out our village priest Dag Sandahl, a good Lutheran but who regularly tagged Latin in his sermons. Yes, he knew the book, and from his study bookshelf brought down an even earlier copy than my own. And there and then we sat down together and read. After an hour I was impatient to be back in my studio and draw, draw these extraordinary images this text brought to life unbidden in my imagination. But I did not leave until I had persuaded Pastor Sandahl to agree to translate the Uppsala section of the Adam of Bremen’s book, and just before Christmas that year, on the day before the Shortest Day, he delivered his translation to my studio. He would not stay, but said I should read the passages about King Domalde and his sacrifice at the Winter Solstice. And so, on the day of the Winter Solstice, I did.

This people have a widely renowned sanctuary called Uppsala.

By this temple is a very large tree with extending branches. It is always green, both in winter and in summer. No one knows what kind of tree this is. There is also a spring there, where the heathens usually perform their sacrificial rites. They throw a live human being into the spring. If he does not resurface, the wishes of the people will come true.

The Temple is girdled by a chain of gold that hangs above the roof of the building and shines from afar, so that people may see it from a distance when they approach there. The sanctuary itself is situated on a plain, surrounded by mountains, so that the form a theatre.

It is not far from the town of Sigtuna. This sanctuary is completely covered with golden ornaments. There, people worship the carved idols of three gods: Thor, the most powerful of them, has his throne in the middle of the hall, on either side of him, Odin and Freyr have their seats. They have these functions: “Thor,” they say, “rules the air, he rules thunder and lightning, wind and rain, good weather and harvests. The other, Odin, he who rages, he rules the war and give courage to people in their battle against enemies. The third is Freyr, he offers to mortals lust and peace and happiness.” And his image they make with a very large phallus. Odin they present armed, the way we usually present Mars, while Thor with the scepter seems to resemble Jupiter. As gods they also worship some that have earlier been human. They give them immortality for the sake of their great deeds, as we may read in Vita sancti Ansgarii that they did with King Eirik.

For all these gods have particular persons who are to bring forward the sacrificial gifts of the people. If plague and famine threatens, they offer to the image of Thor, if the matter is about war, they offer to Odin, but if a wedding is to be celebrated, they offer to Freyr. And every ninth year in Uppsala a great religious ceremony is held that is common to people from all parts of Sweden.”
Snorri also relates how human sacrifice began in Uppsala, with the sacrifice of a king.

Domalde took the heritage after his father Visbur, and ruled over the land. As in his time there was great famine and distress, the Swedes made great offerings of sacrifice at Upsal. The first autumn they sacrificed oxen, but the succeeding season was not improved thereby. The following autumn they sacrificed men, but the succeeding year was rather worse. The third autumn, when the offer of sacrifices should begin, a great multitude of Swedes came to Upsal; and now the chiefs held consultations with each other, and all agreed that the times of scarcity were on account of their king Domalde, and they resolved to offer him for good seasons, and to assault and **** him, and sprinkle the stall of the gods with his blood. And they did so.

There it was, at the end of Adam of Bremen’s description of Uppsala, this description of King Domalde upon which my mural would be based. It is not difficult to imagine, or rather the event itself can be richly embroidered, as I have over the years made my painting so. Karin and I have the books of William Morris on our shelves and I see little difference between his fixation on the legends of the Arthur and the Grail. We are on the cusp here between the pagan and the Christian.  What was Christ’s Crucifixion but a self sacrifice: as God in man he could have saved himself but chose to die for Redemption’s sake. His blood was not scattered to the fields as was Domalde’s, but his body and blood remains a continuing symbol in our right of Communion.

I unroll the latest watercolour cartoon of my mural. It is almost the length of this studio. Later I will ask Greta to collect the other easels we have in the house and barn and then I shall view it properly. But for now, as it unrolls, my drama of the Winter Solstice comes alive. It begins on from the right with body of warriors, bronze shields and helmets, long shafted spears, all set against the side of Uppsala Temple and more distant frost-hoared trees. Then we see the King himself, standing on a sled hauled by temple slaves. He is naked as he removes the furs in which he has travelled, a circuit of the temple to display himself to his starving people. In the centre, back to the viewer, a priest-like figure in a red cloak, a dagger held for us to see behind his back. Facing him, in druidic white, a high priest holds above his head a gold pagan monstrance. To his left there are white cloaked players of long, straight horns, blue cloaked players of the curled horns, and guiding the shaft of the sled a grizzled shaman dressed in the skins and furs of animals. The final quarter of my one- day-to-be-a-mural unfolds to show the women of temple and palace writhing in gestures of grief and hysteria whilst their queen kneels prostate on the ground, her head to the earth, her ladies ***** behind her. Above them all stands the forever-green tree whose origin no one knows.

Greta has entered the studio in her practiced, silent way carrying coffee and rolls from the kitchen. She has seen Midvinterblot many times, but I sense her gaze of fascination, yet again, at the figure of the naked king. She remembers the model, the sailor who came to stay at Kartbacken three summers ago. He was like the harpooner Queequeg in Moby ****. A tattooed man who was to be seen swimming in Toftan Lake and walking bare-chested in our woods. A tall, well-muscled, almost silent man, whom I patiently courted to be my model for King Dolmade. I have a book of sketches of him striding purposefully through the trees, the tattooed lines on his shoulders and chest like deep cuts into his body. This striding figure I hid from the children for some time, but from Greta that was impossible. She whispered to me once that when she could not have my substantial chest against her she would imagine the sailor’s, imagine touching and following his tattooed lines. This way, she said, helped her have respite from those stirrings she would so often feel for me. My painting, she knew, had stirred her fellow maids Clara and Solveig. Surely you know this, she had said, in her resolute and direct city manner. I have to remember she is the age of my eldest, who too must hold such thoughts and feelings. Karin dislikes my sailor king and wishes I would not hide the face of his distraught queen.

Today the sunrise is at 9.0, just a half hour away, and it will set before 3.0pm. So, after this coffee I will put on my boots and fur coat, be well scarfed and hatted (as my son Pontus would say) and walk out onto my estate. I will walk east across the fields towards Spardasvvägen. The sky is already waiting for the sun, but waits without colour, hardly even a tinge of red one might expect.

I have given Greta her orders to collect every easel she can find so we can take Midvinterblot off the floor and see it in all its vivid colour and form. In February I shall begin again to persuade the Nationalmuseum to accept this work. We have a moratorium just now. I will not accept their reasoning that there is no historical premise for such a subject, that such a scene has no place in a public gallery. A suggestion has been made that the Historiska museet might house it. But I shall not think of this today.

Karin is here, her face at the studio window beckons entry. My Darling, yes, it is midwinter’s day and I am dressing to greet the solstice. I will dress, she says, to see Edgar who will be here in half an hour to discuss my designs for this new furniture. We will be lunching at noon. Know you are welcome. Suzanne is talking constantly of England, England, and of course Oxford, this place of dreaming spires and good looking boys. We touch hands and kiss. I sense the perfume of sleep, of her bed.

Outside I must walk quickly to be quite alone, quite apart from the house, in the fields, alone. It is on its way: this light that will bathe the snowed-over land and will be my promise of the year’s turn towards new life.

As I walk the drama of Midvinterblot unfolds in a confusion of noise, the weeping of women, the physical exertions of the temple slaves, the priests’ incantations, the riot of horns, and then suddenly, as I stand in this frozen field, there is silence. The sun rises. It stagge

i slipped out
into the waves of watercolour
that broke themselves upon the shore
of the horizon
and i disappeared
as they darkened into black

i escaped through the sunset
as words were climbing up my legs
setting fire to my ears
and forcing me to retreat away
from the choking letters and sinking ink
that tattooed all this sound into my skin

at first, the sunset saved me
and the waves that gently hit the dock felt like a heartbeat
telling me that this was how it would always be

but soon, i began to miss the panic
just for the simple fact that it was a feeling
and the sunset had stolen them all from me
leaving me bare, black and stretched high above
unable to land on the ground again
unable to even blink stars down onto the grass
unable to do anything
other than wait for the sun to rise again

but solstice has already passed
and the dark hours grow longer again
and i am pulled thin, veiling a world
that accepts me as the night
and doesn't even miss the stars

cityscapes and heartbreaks
808s and carrot cakes
my life took a turn, a left
you tried to make me burn but I left
you at the alter, my destiny I cannot falter
I let me get softer, left the slaughter
watercolour paints and growing pains
deep introspection and soaking rains
get to the root of the issue, the root of the pain
elevate, activate
popping off like champagne

28.1.2016
The sun sets with me every night.
And yet, each of these nights I find a cannot quite
Translate that fade from day to grey;
in oils or ink I can never paint her -
She's gone too soon and the nights resume
and I'm left in darkness with empty paper.
Tomorrow afternoon will be strewn with half-lines -
poetry dripping drowsily from my tired mind
sketches on my sheets and sun-faded carpet
God help that empty-headed artist!
And I wonder if I'll ever draw again...
There can be no art compared to my bedroom window when
My own small framed sun sets again.
Forever watching the sun. Watching it watch me
pages sliding off my windowsill, in dreary ennui
Navy draws my curtains closed on time
But she lingers still, in watercolour lines
And people wonder why I paint the sun
As small as I have done;
I wish I could find apt words to say -
I am getting further from my sun each day.

The descending sun,
A tranquil withdrawal -
An end,
Yet also a beginning.

A delicate watercolour on canvas of sky,
So lovingly crafted.

Soft dusk reveals tiny opals of constellations,
The moon smiles a spectral lustre.

Yet only almost-content;
Your absence leaves me hollow.

Coriander sprinklings and subtle tastes
as we lean together and giggle as children
exchanging nibbles and pecks of love
at the gentle lullings of our sleeping boats

And the sun would shine on our dark heads
burning our hairs and lighting the fires
echoing our laughter while we filled the earth
with eternal love that would span the sky

And all the distances would pull us apart
taking our lives this way and that
winding through the darkest routes
enshrining our happiness to the past

But we would - as always - remember well
clinging to the smells of the world
keeping our hearts closed to disruptions
but letting our confidence sway––––

And yet the world would bring us back
to hear our giggles and childish banters
taking delight at the slightest triggers
and painting lives in watercolour

So moments pass and times repeat
clear in the eye of our observers

But crimson shades and all spring scents
watch our bonded rains and shines

And for every moment I reflect
you shine brighter than luminance.

(The river is watercolour, and I wish you could see how the colours blend in summer
Through the light rain I can’t bear to hear the whispers of the city... I just look into the water It’s transluscent like your skin, blue as your veins. It moves at lightening speed in this rain.

I want you to come and see... but they can barely leave your curtains open for fear you’ll catch something from the light, the air. Your delicate complexion would only be tarnished.
I want to see you here in this painting but you seem so far from everything now, how am I meant to find you when now everything, everything I do feels like falling. )

The river is so gentle this time of year when the rain falls like feathers and fills it right up to the banks. It’s a water colour painting, all pale green and blue and as I sit on the bank it reminds me of you;  your transparent skin, your pale green eyes and blue veins visible...
You are paint with too much water in it, now. Diluted, wasting...There’s a swan pecking at crumbs on the bench where you should be sitting, next to me. Did you  know a swan can break your arm? Not that there’s much of you left to break now. You can barely leave your bed, without summoning fatigue to gnaw on your bones.
It’s hard to sit knowing that however hard I grip the bench it won’t bring  anything back and knowing that I can never hug you as tightly as I’m clutching the wood because you are made of glass now.
The trees are throwing their leaves off in sudden gusts and they flail in the air so the world looks like fire. Their flamebraches flickering menacingly. It has an energy that you will never feel again, neither in your bones nor beating against your skin.
You are protected now. Like signets beneath their mother’s wing. You feel no wind nor rain, nor sunshine, no ecstacy in your veins. Everything is white... Artificially dyed flowers stand ridgid at the foot of your bed. I know they bring you no comfort.
A storm is coming. The swans retreat to their shelters, the people trail off into the distance, their faces hidden by dripping umbrellas. The trees tear off all of their leaves in fiery rage until they dance furiously in the naked wind. They are angry because you are not here to dance with them. ******* you, they hate you for it. For lying there, tormented and tired as the wind screams that ‘LIFE GOES ON AND ON without you.’
I stay on the bench, immobile. I am soaked right through to my lungs, feel rain drops running down the ladders of my ribs. I look like I have just crawled from the river, as leaves stick to my skin. I grip the wood tightly still.
Once it was sunny. It was bright, cloudless and you stood here next to the bench. You laughed at how the swans always looked so angry, like ballet dancers concentrating too hard. The trees had all their fresh young leaves, wrapped  in their velvet coats.
The swans don’t look angry today, just sad, brow beaten. Their beaks point down as they huddle from the cold.
I hate you for not being here.
I let go of the bench. The storm rages.
I dive head first into the dashing water. It is deeper than usual but still shallow.  I keep my head beneath the stirring water for as long as I can. I feel the cold rush against my skin, filter through my clothes and encase me in it’s breath. The air inside me screams to be released, threatening to burst through my back like wings.
I broke the already shattering surface and hauled my numb body onto the bank.
I felt then, as I lay on the soaking ground, that I knew you were never coming here or anywhere else you loved ever again. I thought I could feel your ghost in my hands,  in my throat. Slipping awa.
The next day, the day you sat up and the doctors said you were a miracle, the day the nurse took away all the ugly flowers, the trees by the river had never stood so still, so wonderfully still.

Sunflowers in the sun
feeding from the light
like a golden watercolour painting
Field mice nibbling
Bees buzzing
Coming out to play
In the middle of a wheat field
Turned over
looking up at the dust particles that fill the sky
Oh how wonderful it would be to become a mole
Or fly.

November shades down,
Single colour trumping all—
  .  .  .  Bluebirds in grey sky.

There was once a girl with a fear of mirrors.
A fear so frightening,
it followed her round wherever she went.
Zombie films were fine
and spiders didn't bother her,
she would have happily seen a ghost
and the dark was her best friend.
But the mirror haunted her.
"Look at yourself..."
it would whisper,
"Fat,
ugly,
baby face,
crooked teeth..."
Even in bed,
when night veiled it's reflection,
it spoke.
The duvet over her head wasn't much of a shield,
the voice taunting her,
ringing in her ears,
until she woke up,
a sticky, writhing mass in the middle of the matress.
"Good Morning."
The day time was no better.
Shop windows acted as put-me-up mirrors,
cutlery in cafes the same.
There was a solution to walking in the day time,
head down,
head down,
head down,
don't make eye contact,
head down,
but a rogue puddle could stop her in her tracks.
Her watercolour reflection swam menacingly on it's surface,
the voice rising dreamily from it like a mermaid speaking under water.
But she'd take a whole city of puddles
if she could avoid the carnival of horrors that was shopping for clothes.
There,
no matter where she stepped,
mirrors of all shapes and sizes would spring from corners,
the reflections getting redder
and uglier
and sweatier
and more pathetic
each time she span into a new one,
pretty,
thin,
popular girls preened themselves in the corner of her eyes,
friends with the mirrors.
She could hear the voice speaking to them,
but it's words were kind and friendly.
Looking down made no difference as mirrors adorned the floors,
up the same,
the ceiling a funfair nightmare of crazy mirrors,
the whole shop a kaleidoscope of her disgusting,
repulsive,
loathsome face.
She couldn't even cry.
The fear was so great,
that she couldn't risk seeing a reflection in one of the tears.
Even her sorrows mocked her.
The only way was to bottle it up,
to smile,
act like nothing was wrong,
look in her bag when her friends were looking in the mirror,
close her eyes at the hairdressers,
throw a sheet over her own, hateful mirror.
Throw a sheet over herself.
Nobody could hurt her if she didn't let them in.
One day,
the girl smashed the mirror in her room.
She grabbed a shoe and struck it with such force,
that the awful face before her splintered
and crashed to the floor in a thousand pieces.
When she looked down,
hundreds of dark eyes blinked back at her.
It's shell still remained hanging on the wall,
a black rectangle that looked like it could be a portal to another world.
She could still see herself in it.
She shut her eyes and squeezed them hard,
but the mirrors were behind her eyelids,
printed onto her brain,
painted onto her pupils.
The mirror was inside her.
The girl was now a looking glass of self-loathing.
The voice whispered inside her head.
"Just look at yourself.
Look at yourself,
look at yourself,
look at yourself,
LOOK."
She realised she would never be able to escape the mirrors.
She realised that she would smash herself into nothing but broken glass if she didn't just
look.
So she did.
As each day went by,
with every new mirror that crept up on her,
she looked inside it,
looked at herself.
The first time sweat beaded and dripped down her neck
and her hands shook.
She thought she would faint,
thought she was going to run,
thought she wouldn't do it,
but she did.
She looked.
She kept looking for a long time,
scrutinsing her every feature until she realised,
it wasn't that bad.
She looked,
until eventually,
as time passed by,
she managed to smile.
Until eventually,
whenever she closed her eyes,
the mirrors on her lids nodded "You'll be okay.".
Until eventually,
the fear wasn't so scary anymore.
Until,
eventually,
she let herself cry.
And she wanted to see herself in the tears.
There was a once a girl who liked mirrors.

I adore you.
That is all there is to it.
Sometimes red poppies blossom in my stomach because of it
Like ***** watercolour water it grows increasingly murky
I find it is a beautiful shade of hurt and soul
It contrasts nicely with my porcelain casing
Like a tea *** I am poised to empty my contents
I adore, you.

He loved her madly
Pinched skin, purple and blue. Still
her tears gave him joy.

I have dreams that I once was
A free majestic albino peacock,
Jewellery trapped under a rock.
I have dreams that I never was.

I have dreams  that I once was
An old tree covered in snow,
Winds that took an eastern blow.
I have dreams that I never was.

I have dreams that I once was
A poor little drowning fish,
A silver ring left to tarnish.
I have dreams that I never was.

I have dreams that I once was
A lot of things and one thing,
But I never was anything.
I have dreams that I once was.


--Watercolour

I am the two tailed Comet.
I am the high and Low.
I am a wretch and Dragon.
I am a ghost of glee and Woe.

I am the perfect lover.
Who smiles with perfect eyes.
I am the imperfect lover.
Who's smile's a disguise.

I am the best at kindness.
I dream up fantastic dates.
I am, at best, the kindest.
But it seems my days come late.

I am your Master and your keeper;
Who pets you on your knees.
I am the crippled *****,
Who's rotted with disease.

But every side, both Green and Purple,
Shares a hue of deepest blue.
Every one of them is hurtful.
And hurts that it hurt you.

between the breaths, the boredom, the blues, the *****
the smokes, the sacrifices, the smiles, the sadness, the snooze
the poems, the problems, the pros and the cons
the needles, the nobodies, the neurotics, the loose
the careless, the fearless, the dreamless, who knows
the tulip, the lilac, the jasmine, the rose
the suns, the moons, the earth, the birth
the nights, the fights, the lies arise
the loneliness
among the hate, the fate, the date delayed
the loneliness
along the tongue, a song, wrong, wrong
the loneliness
inside the heart, a part apart, from the start
the loneliness, the loneliness, the loneliness...

"and the crowd, so many people,
and the cries, the laughs, the whispers...
Too many mouths talking in my ear, my left ear
Is it the chaos of unphysical presences ?
But I touch them, I see them, I hear them...
And nobody is here" -- Myra


-- Watercolour

The distant hills brood today
cloaks of mist streaming skyward
stealing colour from the world
Sunlight bleeds faintly
through an ethereal wall
The frozen air a watercolour wash

(after a watercolour by Mary Fedden OBE RA)
 
It is early morning, a Tuesday in June. It is May’s birthday. She likes to get up early on her birthday and join her husband on the beach. He has been up since five, fiddling about, making tea, reading a little, avoiding his desk. May thinks, when she watches him dress with a half an eye open feigning sleep, he looks so distinguished with his silver, nearly white hair and that beard (her suggestion). And today I am forty-five and he is . . . old enough to be my father. But he is my companion, my love, my watcher who stalks me still with his gaze of admiration, which I never tire of when we are alone, but I am sometimes embarrassed by when we are in company. He knows this, but he can’t help himself. He says he loves to watch me cross a room, stand still against a window, reach for a vase on a shelf, sit at my work table, intent.
 
May sees him far down the beach as she walks with purpose through the dunes that separate their cottage from the beach. Her short boots glisten with the heavy dew. She has pulled on her work dress over her striped nightshirt, a dress she wove in a grey Jura their first long winter. There he is in his stupid cap his grandson gave him when he acquired the boat. He’s carrying a fishing net to collect creatures from the rock pools further down the beach. She remembers when this ‘interest’ began. He had read to her one night a long extract from *Father and Son by Edmund Gosse. It was a kind of threnody to a state that once existed, a veritable Garden of Eden, destroyed in two generations by a mid-Victorian passion for sea-shore collecting. ‘These rock-basins’ Gosse had written, ’fringed by corallines, filled with still water almost as pellucid as the upper air itself, thronged with beautiful sensitive forms of life, - they exist no longer, they are all profaned, and emptied and vulgarized. The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisite product of the centuries of natural selection has been crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning curiosity.'
 
She loved to hear him read, knowing that he loved to read to her. The joy on his face sometimes; it was worth enduring all the strange things he found to read (she fell asleep so often as he read) just for those occasions when she felt pinned to her seat, grappled to her bed like Gulliver, wishing it would never stop, such words, his dear voice. How long had it been now?
 
He didn’t walk to meet her. He let her walk to him. He stood there waiting. When she drew close he stretched out his arms and arranged her body in front of him, walked back a little and smiled his admiring smile. There were almost tears in his eyes, as there so often were when he had no words. She knew on his desk there would be a poem, and like the poet Ted Hughes (who neither of them could deal with), a birthday letter waiting to be given to her at breakfast, with gifts she knew he had worried over.
 
She stood quite still and let the fresh September wind gather her now quite long hair and turning away from him, let it stream behind her. He had turned too, realising in saying nothing he had said too much. He remembered another birthday on a different shore, a day when she had surrounded him, captured him, loved him with a passion that had now tempered, was the stuff of his writing that now had found its way into a 100 Love Poems to Read before you Die. He had long since refused to speak these out loud, refused to be visible anymore, would not be interviewed; it was now the novel, the long, long journey of a novel, the months, years even (In Praise of Rust took three agonising years).
 
And now, standing in this sun-glinting bay, ignoring the lighthouse, May thought of Mrs Ramsey and that summer party on Skye, those earnest young men, those artistic young women, and her commanding husband who would not look at the lighthouse, who would not countenance a visit.
 
Her husband, strange to think this because she never felt herself his wife, never commanded anything. He made decisions, and then laid things gently aside. It was enough for him to have been decisive. What she did with that was up to her. He wanted her to be free, always free from any command. When they married, to him it was like the silent grace they ‘said’ at each meal. She knew it had meant so much to him: the silence of that moment. He had read to her the morning of their marriage a text from William Penn – she had remembered one phrase  ‘Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love . . .’ And he yet had never commanded her. He seemed to admire her being her own self. She was not his. They were the dearest friends, weren’t they? He expected nothing from her (he had said this so often), no commitment, no promise; just gentleness, a peaceful nature, an understanding that he loved her with a passion she would never understand because she knew he did not understand it himself.

baby lie with me
with your hand
beneath my back
your gentle fingertips tracing
the outline of my ribs on my
bare chest

i've got my hand on
your chest
i can feel each
heartbeat,
your heart fluttering gently like
a caged butterfly

the sun melts
slowly
like watercolour behind the hills
and we continue
to lie
there
just the two of
us

there was no
tomorrow
only the
moment
of the
night

My country is my cradle, gently rocking,
gently spinning dreams of further isles,
prosperous waters and rivers of gold.

Dystopian land of watercolour sunsets
the fiery sea illuminates foreign pathways
and we know in our cold cores we must go.

Place silhouette pieces or outlines of my heart in thirty or more envelopes.
Paste each one with a new soft paintbrush which clean cream bristles. Push them into torn up fragments of clean new watercolour paper. The sharp edges feel through onto the wooden table leaving mistaken, accidental grooves. Glimmers of sawdust are ****** up into the pockets of your lungs, where they contaminated and will permanently sit.
It was a small heart, the colour of grey sky reflected on seas and carried in bloated raindrops. The texture of diamond. Carved up as easily as wax by a blunt butter knife.
The envelopes are neatly labelled with white tailors chalk powders.

I last rode this road in Summer
When the light was as now;
Long, flat and mellow
But by the hour not the season

The trees back then still wore clothes
Green, perhaps liver-spotted with yellow
Now I watch them tangle their naked arms
And the world turns its face away in shame,
Longing for its chastised summer

The wheat field is grey scrub
An old bristling beard
And my bike tyres trace its edge
Like fingers on the jaw of our grandfather

And the watercolour wind
Rinses my knuckle bones
And then bites them open
They don’t bother to bleed
They’ve been chewed too many times

As the clouds wash in,
Black with frostbite,
I bite my winter scarf
And sing to it of bluebirds

Encased, as an oil painting,
behind a plane of glass.
Years of exposure dulling the canvas,
no funding to restore the brightness
of the subject's lifeless eyes.
They lay dormant, cloudy,
From a lifetime of accumulative debris.
Transferred between people, buildings, countries;
Memories on display for brief intervals,
Then packaged and returned to storage,
As if they were never your own.
People shift, distorted, beyond the coffin of glass.
Their movements hazy,
The shutter speed slow.
Colours muted,
Sounds muffled,
Melting into each other.
An abstract watercolour, waxing and waning.
Low resolution projections on a dimly lit screen -
A theatre seating but one.

The nightingale gives way
to the ruddy dawn and foam blooms
overhead among the early watercolour
skies.

I hear a blue-*** (or robin) whistling it's tune
through the bulbs which rise bouncing
from the rippling sea of soil,
growing in seamless swathes beneath
the leaves silken pink.

The sun dapples through, reflecting
a rosy hue into the glass
dew drops fast melting
into the thirsty earth, and peeps
over the treetops before
gradually bowing his glinting head.

Old daffodils turn russet
in the golden day
and wrinkle
as the clouds blush.

… a watercolour freshness
breezes through the open window.
The trees are stretching,
Shaking their sleeping dust dew
From their earthy leaves:
Nature’s man-made morning is
Apple-crunch crisp.

Square white canvases
          painted brown--brown aroma--
                    yellow pool fish--flush!

This collecting; this laying out of treasures. A piece of watercolour paper cut to fit the sill of a window, then each object placed in a sequence. Stones and shells at first, then slivers of wood, a crab, a starfish. Eventually, small objects from inside the Fishing Station. Strange and so different away from their location. Strange to be displayed as distinctly separate rather than a gregarious jumble of ‘finds’. Their shadows fell with such delicacy across the paper, turning as the light turned, sharp-edged now, smudged later. I would catch her sitting before these collections, observing their properties as the window projected different qualities of light with the passing day. I had them to myself in the early mornings when I crept from our bed into the grey blue light of the dawn. I would sit before them with a china mug of tea feeling my body come to terms with its own self having left its shared part of me in bed. Every day seemed more precious than the previous. As the calendar moved relentlessly forward I realised we had begun to speak in whispers, beyond whispers in fact. I would look at her and speak silently in my head, as I do when I ‘say’ our silent grace, when I close my eyes and pause before the delight of a meal shared. She would nod, or answer with only the barest movement of her petalled lips. The most delicate stroke of my arm was a poem; a hand resting against the neck a chapter of novel. The volumes of words that we had between us come to own tumbled away into the machair. And living slowed right down. Every movement had a graceful turn, bend or flow to it. If we stood close to each other there was rarely the need to venture into an embrace. For once we were not about to part, we became completely, utterly together. We would listen to each other breathe until even that became absorbed into the sea's great breath we could feel from the cottage windows ruffling the waters.

Chew the water, and don't breathe the air
You weave Apocalypse in your loom
You paint Armageddon on your easel
Black watercolour
Made from human ash
Bombing in the microwave
The embers will die, and the winds will cease
Like the fingernails of a corpse
Trudge into malevolent oblivion
Convinced by the impotent fallacy of happiness;
Generation Nuclear Apathy
Generation Destiny Liquidation
...And the minute counter ticks away...
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock

Eliot was wrong
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
Not with a whimper
But a bang.

Some one has destroyed
the robin’s nest
and stolen the eggs
Jane said

she leaned
into the hedgerow
beneath the streamlet
and parted the branches

her voice choked
as her fingers poked
about the damaged nest
you stood watching

behind her
over her shoulder
watching her fingers move
who’d do such a thing?

you asked
all gone
not an egg left
she said

in saddened tone
you leaned near her
smelt lavender water
she wore

her dark hair
pinned back
with metal grips
why destroy?

she said
why steal?
you sensed her sadness
felt her ache

and how
it would feel
she withdrew her hands
and wiped them

on her dull grey dress
and looked along the lane
and back at you again
who would do such things?

you asked
she looked at the hedgerow
that now concealed
the damaged nest

and said
father says
such are humankind
that seek and take

and leave all fouled
and lost and leave
to nature or to God
to mend and count

the cost
I saw the nest and eggs
last time we came
you said

the beauty of the eggs
and nest made neat
Jane walked on
along the lane

and you walked
beside her
her dull grey dress
swaying as he walked

her hand reached out
for yours
her fingers slim
unpainted nails

her thumb rubbed
against your hand’s skin
the sky
watercolour blue

with puffs of white
just the countryside
sans eggs and nest
and Jane and you.

The sky like the palm of my hands
Is clear and faint
Holding stars and then slowly digesting them
Just like I do with magic pills.


--Watercolour

stem of orchid jewels
hearts white. fronds dangling caressed
clouds obscure. Judas gifts wrap
kitchen. bromeliad pool &
bird chorus, cocteau twins, unwound
clock. himalayan surveyor measures
watercolour, telescopic insight
ginger of blue flowerless season
changing, renewed construction
seeds bloom, a winter pose. house of
possibilities in clear air, away from here
barbeque covered, herbs sprout flavour
zen stone feature a cat’s new bed

To the boy I saw at work today,
the one so beautiful,
my heart
stopped,
what happened to our fairy tale ending,
the part where you give me your number and sweep me away?
Maybe I was just so
blinded
by your watercolour eyes,
of blueish grey,
your large, steady hands that brushed against my own pleading two
when you payed for your drink,
that brushed against my bare back,
against my stomach,
against my cheek
in the very same moment,
that I saw the stars that you didn't.
I was sure I saw something buried in the creases of your smile,
something that said
"I'm yours."
All
mine.
But something told me otherwise when you walked away,
blessed the rest of the room with those watercolour eyes
and gave them all the same promise.
To you I was just a
faceless vending machine,
to me you were
everything I've been longing for.
My pathetic
pictures
I paint with people like you,
like the boy at the bus stop,
like the boy in the cafe,
like every boy who ever took my breath away,
are as realistic and accurate
as the finest Dali or Picasso.
But to me,
you are all more real,
more beautiful,
than any work of art.
More even than my own
pathetic
paintings.