Titus

Canals in the studio walls,
lattice steers the light to the postured subject
wild-haired in inks
red-maned in oils bearing a sword across the chest.
Saskia: once a goddess, again woman in background,
the servant upstairs will draw her bath.

Lights splatter on black water,
dabbed grays on brick bridges lay wet
contemplating the next stroke in Jodenbreestraat
Waterlooplein will carry you stone by stone.
It is November, and Titus will grow Roman.
Saskia’s brow trickles as she sleeps.

A sister will come from Frisia
and the nurse will hold him at his mother’s funeral.
Red strands on the house linens, a grave for sale,
Titus will not have to see his children die.

There is no war with the Goths,
only another grave in Westerkerk.
2006

Wardian Case

for Camille Pissarro

The merchant ships in harbour;
Spanish, Dutch, Danish.
“drawing coconut trees.”

The donkeys flagellate, lashed to their carts,
veins and skin ripple on forearms,
the Negro women do their wash,
carrying their jugs and baskets on their heads.

Leaving the Queen’s Quarter
in crates and boxes with worn labels;
“Madrid, Amsterdam, Copenhagen.”

The pencil scratching form, value, shadow.

The palette; from Charlotte Amalie
“bolted to Caracas in order to get clear
of the bondage of bourgeois life.”
2006

The Cutters

The old woman stood in the tamarind’s shade
Bermuda grass bristling her bare feet
her head tied like her hands
akimbo, mouth snarled in command
madras wrapped, dough under her fingernails
her spattered apron clung to her stomach.

Two hired men bent in the heat
fired bronze backs strained, spun,
stretched, their cutlasses swung
and grass, branches, leaves leapt up
over their heads amidst the flamboyant
and balisier, frangipani and oleander.

2009

Green Arrow Commission

The commissions are slow but sure.

A Poui Tree sheds its Flowers

The rain falls in the night like blankets
flattening and spreading when it finally lands.
The poui remembers it fondly, forgetting slowly
each drop it sheds. Its own flowers are lemmings
letting go of the hands, the branches.
Fluttering down till they collide with stone and wet earth
staring upward as they die beautifully together.
The anoles salute them, holding their breath in honour
throats swollen, red, yellow, green, proud, alive.
Nodding their approval, their black eyes turn to respect
and each ridge on their backs, each scale reflects
their own majesty. These dragons in miniature
standing sentinels in moonlight.

2006