Poetry
Summer 2006
Sketches from Lucian Freud Paintings at the Tate, 2003. Love in the Afternoon
Naples (Cézanne) It’s African heat, the servant brings drinksAnd her wrap—tangerine, cerise—has loosened… O darlin come in with your breezeFor all of us under the sailcloth And the sun of […]
Poetry
Summer 2006
Sketches from Lucian Freud Paintings at the Tate, 2003. Colours of a Breast
“Wind very brisk… clouds moving very fast…”—John Constable, 1822 Cream and pale greenmauve and tangerine.The blues of slight bruises.Rouge, pink, milky teaginger, lime, verdigris. Strangely, there is nothingentirely raw here. […]
Poetry
Summer 2006
Sketches from Lucian Freud Paintings at the Tate, 2003. Apples in State: Two Studies
1. Courbet’s Three green ones, two with a touch of green.The others red, with the healthy scars apples have.They fill the bowl as manifestoThe pewter jug standing guardAnd two guerilla […]
Poetry
Summer 2006
Sketches from Lucian Freud Paintings at the Tate, 2003. Mother
…would give back to the son the mother’s richness of feeling—W.H. Auden, In Memory of Sigmund Freud 1 Now that her lips are sewnInto a purse of silenceHe gives back […]
Poetry
Summer 2006
Sketches from Lucian Freud Paintings at the Tate, 2003. Woman Smiling (1959)
It’s his “amplifying the touch”that perhaps makes her smile wry,as if light on the face, once fired,has eased the clay open, quizzically.Does the girl find hermarriage à la mode amusing?I […]