City

A city low on nightmares (though with a fondness for mythological monsters), of dreamlike beauty, of love and betrayal, of rumour. Twilit and dangerous, described as having damp, cold, narrow streets through which one might get lost, or find oneself in an abandoned palazzo, which must surely be a Venetian principle, just as honeymooners in gondolas are another.

A city of dust, of time, of fog. A city ceased to be seen, that in winter chooses invisibility, all the while crying (in an echo of JB's) “Depict me! Depict me!”

Picture credit: Venice with the Salute, c.1840-1845, J M W Turner (source: WikiArt).

See Watermark: An Essay on Venice by Joseph Brodsky.

Written June 2022.

Language, Observation

In my book-burdened heart I see coincidence, everything linked. Books, passion-filled, contain vivid image and smell; a late sunbeam gilding their spine as my mind is carried away, far away to the land of the book or to my own past. African villages, shacks roofed with tin, hills a Chinese scroll, gulls circling inland. A wood-pigeon's coo disturbs such imagery and takes me to Middleton-On-Sea. Language, observation; that's what characters – real and fictional – are made. Affliction, wounds stitched into them and questions curled like sea-horses; sunken galleons rumoured – with skulls and treasures – to be there but never found, too many fathoms deep.

Picture credit: Seahorses in Morecambe, Eric Gill (source: WikiArt).

After Derek Walcott, written June 2022.

Ma Kilman's Bar

I cannot see the island's geography as clearly as I can Ma Kilman's bar: NO PAIN CAFÉ ALL WELCOME, with its wrinkled paint, bead curtain and neon sign endorsing Coco-Cola. Blind Monsieur Seven Seas sitting on a crate outside speaking in old African babble to his sharp-eared dog; shifting as the day ages his box to the shade. Philoctete, a wounded fisherman with foam-white hair, in the rumshop window staring out to sea, periodically anointing his itching, tingling shin with ice or Vaseline.

Picture credit: West Indies Divers, 1899, Winslow Homer (source: WikiArt).

See Omeros by Derek Walcott. 

Written June 2022.