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Tuesday 1 December 2009

Chromatic


.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/I_raro_te_Oviri_-_Gauguin.JPG

I Raro te Oviri
: Paul Gauguin, 1899 (Dallas Museum of Art; image by adrienlenoir, 2007)


She comes in colors -- Arthur Lee



Ton corps a une intéressante odeur comme des fleurs et ta peau
A une texture élastique que j'aime bien comparer aux balles de caoutchouc
Une fois je t'ai vue dans un film et tes cheveux paraissaient noirs
Tu descendais le flanc du coteau comme le feu noir
Dans une robe blanche tout le flanc du coteau montait en fumées bleues

You are the only veritable filmstar we have ever known
Eternity is in love with the works of time in your every scene
In the now lost print of The Finding of the Chanterelle your hair had changed
From gold to black within the deep chromatic field
Created by the fern dark hillside down which you floated in a white dress




5 comments:

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,
two beautiful poems, four beautiful pictures -- what a way to start the day (thanks).

Here is my start --

12.1

red-orange of sky behind still blackness
of trees, silver of planet beside branch
in foreground, sound of waves in channel

that still, more than ever
is an event which is

light in the picture, even
as it looks, in this

silver of sunlight reflected in channel,
shadowed green canyon of ridge above it

Steve

TC said...

Steve,

Sweet lines again; something very lovely in the disciplines of the iterative and the incremental. Thank you once more for putting some morning "light in the picture".

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

thanks tom, another light this morning (another morning). . . .

12.2

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
top of ridge, motion of shadowed leaves
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

side of charged part, that
in other cases space

causes another event, that
point, in this light

line of white cloud to the left of point,
tree-lined green of ridge across from it


steve

Zephirine said...

Very lovely poem, Tom, I like the interplay of sounds in the two languages and the recurrence of black and dark among the colours.

Films preserve an image, but the memory can do it even better...

TC said...

Thank you Zeph, it's the only time I've ever attempted this bilingual trick. What is it about French that allows one to say things like this and (almost) get away with it?

The film and the memory have converged in my mind. A while back there were rumours of a print existing in the possession of a fellow living back east amid the snows of Maine (not quite Gauguin country). We could not track it down however.

But I do still have the memory. And of course the filmstar has her own memory too, though that remains an area whereof I may not know, therefore may not speak.