impressionism

Tags

'scape, 1878, 1880, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1892, 1901, 1935, 19th century, 2015, 20th century, appearence, beer, being, blue, cafe, chair, cypress, decision, doors, Edouard Manet, Edouard Vuillard, emerald, field, garden, glasses, hair, impressionism, leaf, living, looking, mass, passing, Paul Cezanne, people, photograph, posture, profile, rock, shadow, skyline, sound, speech, survival, turquoise, van Gogh, view, writing

 

 

 

                      impressionism

                      when it appeared that being
                      took more than looking
                      to survive in grander scale

                      people froze in pose of living
                      and, standing, turned from the
                      emerald skyline and blue of leaf

                      until the ‘chirrup’-click
                      fit to portrait – maybe landscape –
                      enlarged, reduced (and whopaintedthis ‘click’ gottit) of

                      chair standing but not on
                      the tiles by the
                      turquoise door blue – wassnext! – standing

                      right in front (of the view
                      looking to be written on a notepad) right there
                      to one side of the frame in profile, ‘like I was …’

                      looking in ‘ready’ chirrup – then
                                                                      nudged
                      passing out of everyone’s way – ‘sorry!’

                      glasses on the head before
                      wheatfield with cypresses, hennaered
                      hair before rock shadows, and

                      tell me, is it the transluscent beer
                      or the backward look to another order
                      the point in the corner of the café-concert?

 

witnessed between elbows at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, 030515: La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Garden, Edouard Vuillard, 1901, reworked 1935; Van Gogh’s Chair, Vincent van Gogh, 1888; A Wheatfield, with Cypresses, Vincent van Gogh, 1889; Hillside in Provence, Paul Cézanne, about 1890-2; Corner of a Café-Concert, Edouard Manet, probably 1878-80

 

 

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20th century & sound wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
being wormhole: dash
blue wormhole: Jon
doors wormhole: through
field wormhole: keep the light off
garden wormhole: the open window
glasses wormhole: new garden
hair & shadow wormhole: 1964
living & skyline wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
looking & posture wormhole: and that’s where I are
passing wormhole: 1963
people & writing wormhole: well,
speech wormhole: quite … / … yet – poewieview #12

 

crease and score of silver-morning sky

Tags

'scape, 2015, architecture, buildings, chimney, class, dome, glass, hats, life, morning, pediment, photograph, pillars, pipes, privacy, reaching, shops, silver, sky, society, streets, temple, time, Wellington Street, windows, wood, Woolwich, words

 

 

 

                           buildings rise through time upon
                           all manner of wood-frame and
                           glass-case and curlèd-word frontage

                           with banner over blurring street-
                           function and hats of class
                           below stony windows of raised

                           privacy up by pillared frontages
                           and side-street down-pipe
                           up to lipped pediment and frilly

                           chimney all hunched in a row
                           to dome and timèd temple
                           filigree of reach oblivious to the

                           crease and score of silver-morning sky

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

buildings wormhole: organ / sunlight in all our eyes – poewieview #11
chimney wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
glass & time wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
life & sky wormhole: life [‘n’ death] / legerdemain – poewieview #15
morning wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
shops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
silver wormhole: earthed
sky wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
streets & windows wormhole: early evening
wood wormhole: dream 260815
Woolwich wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
words wormhole: quite … / … yet – poewieview #12

 

finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

Tags

2015, advertising, afterlife, alignment, alley, angel, apartment, architecture, ash tree, Ashlar Place, balcony, baptism, bay window, beech, belief, Beresford Square, Bloomfield Road, boundary, brick, brown, building, buildings, bus, cars, change, childhood, church, compassion, crane, daughter, death, decades, Eglinton Hill, family, glass, God, gold, grass, grey, gurdwara, halo, hedge, hill, history, houses, identity, iron, jet plane, John, khanda, Lee Rigby, leylandii, life, lime, living, London, loneliness, looking, love, memory, mother, Mum, Nan, passing, photograph, pipes, Plumstead, rain, red, rooftops, sandstone, shadow, shop, sky, smile, society, sound, stone, streetlight, streets, suitcase, sun, the British Empire, time, traffic, travelling, trees, true nature, walls, wind, Woolwich, Woolwich New Road, writing

 

 

 

            looking for my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915¹

            these times of being cut loose are more usual than comfortable
            the buzz of contact and identity more potential than actual

            I go up to London to find bits of my true nature somewhere
            deep inside the forty four miles of time that has elapsed,

            past the same street boards advertising new plastic on trend,
            in even more colourful lime but now un-im-bleach-able;

            where grand gable and architrave stand cleanly revealed in all
            of their time from behind trimmed hedge, but window bay and

            fanned lintel remain obscured behind opportune ash (and
            where crickets rasp in raised lawn to ear level off the hill); on

            the hill² a crack in the front wall sinking century-ly downhill
            under sounds of jet somewhere in the sky hidden by dampening

            of leylandii; did I get baptised at All Saints Shooters Hill³,
            or did my brother, when the church was still young, its

            thousand panes held individual by lead, reflecting the
            cubist street, I don’t remember now – fractured memory;

            where sandstone is shaped short in modest Empire-control: in
            niche and ledge and decorative finial, during all the wind of

            cold streets, withstanding the new redbrick of decades; I
            cannot draw the line of brick at the corner of Bloomfield

            Road, true neither to hill nor sky nor shadowed underledge
            to the proud cornice (boundaries to distant-impossible crane)

            or even the sharp roofs clipped to lead-clad valley, let alone the
            ample iron downpipe … but I have learnt to write the architecture

            of odd alignment and cut-through alley; perched now against
            Ashlar Place at just the right angle between sun-wipe and shadow

            (shiny haloes in the indents on the page as I write Gurdwara
             Sahib Ramgarhia Temple⁴ in biro), the architecture of

            eternal Empire highlighted in gold with khandas blowing
            in the wind … still cannot obscure the luxury apartments in

            constant construct: -ING IS BELIEVING;⁵ buses come and
            buses go all along Woolwich New Road before the clapping

            troup of ‘Time for God’ angels and their families stood around,
            full of God’s immanent voices, in and out of sight and chant,

            (I have an old photo: a man crossing the road from Beresford
             Square⁶ with box suitcase in grey [and suggested brown] after

            apparent rain … when the retired newsagent passed by adding
            that he had run that shop opposite for thirty years, how –

            much – it – has – changed); perched, now, on the Metropolitan
            Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough, oiled and crust stone

            from hide-breath and redundant exhaust; a mother and slinky
            daughter watch the marching bands pass from their third floor

            balcony, height of streetlight, defined before the upright
            sea of tarp covering the next block of the Royal Arsenal

            Riverside in construct (surprise!); ah, Lee Rigby,⁷ under height
            of Elliston House, these cars pass far too quick to get

            to their traffic, those beech trees opposite have grown to
            lean downhill for fifty years and more; I looked at every

            plaque, Mum, found plenty of Jeans and Margarets (and
            even Gladyss) but no Redfords, I can’t think I would have

            missed you sixteen years into other existences … I don’t
            know: I smiled at some of the plaques as I looked for you,

            I shall smile at everyone now that I haven’t found you

 

¹ this peice follows my last visit to London: walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, driving to Eltham to where my mother (Jean Marguerite Redford 1933-1999, daughter of Gladys Charlotte Conlay 1906-1989) was cremated
² Eglinton Hill, early childhood home
³ All Saints Shooters Hill
⁴ Woolwich Gurdwara
⁵ woolwich new road and buildings
⁶ true nature II
⁷

 

 

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brown & love & red wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
buildings & life & streets wormhole: gotcha
bus & sun wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
cars wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
change & gold & Woolwich wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
childhood & Nan wormhole: new garden
church wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
compassion wormhole: [s]
crane wormhole: com- / mute
daughter wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
death & writing wormhole: Poewieviews
Eglinton Hill & London wormhole: the breath of London
family wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
glass wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey & identity & time & trees & walls wormhole: walking through Lewes
hedge wormhole: the continental stride of trains
history & Mum wormhole: sit
lime & sky & stone wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
living wormhole: currency: / assent for statement – / ‘smakin’alivvin’
loneliness wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
looking wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
mother wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
passing wormhole: clouds
Plumstead wormhole: dream 260815
rain wormhole: “walking …”
rooftops & smile & streetlight wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
shadow wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
society wormhole: the Growing Man
sound & wind wormhole: the open window
travelling wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938

 

corroboration

Tags

1978, 2014, childhood, chimney, garden, Genesta Road, growth, home, morning, oak, photograph, pink, rooftops, sandstone, sun, time, work

 

 

 

                corroboration

                                arriving home
                                I took a photo
                                of the sun low
                                behind the oak
                                and found that
                                chimneys and
                                rooftops were
                                deeply pink and sandstone after all

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

childhood & rooftops wormhole: cloud
chimney & morning & sun wormhole: sunny morning
garden & oak wormhole: ‘“ruddy crows!” / said my Dad …’
Genesta Road & work wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
home wormhole: quest in brown
pink wormhole: deeper
time wormhole: a known from without the unknown

 

letters to mum II – family // like a grate

Tags

1998, 2014, cancer, chemo, family, Genesta Road, God, identity, illness, Jehovah's Witnesses, letter, letting go, life, love, Mum, Nan, photograph, reading, relationship, ship, Thames, time, tired, typewriter, university, words, work

 

Mum was diagnosed with cancer in the early summer of 1998, she died the following March 1999; I couldn’t get up to London to see her regularly so I started a correspondence; sixteen years later I realise that our correspondence didn’t just stop with her death, the same as our life together didn’t: our life together was always the response between the words and events …

 

 

                                                              290798

                Dear Mum,

                it was good to read from you
                in this new write of relationship
                although the tiredness in your word
                was obvious when it came:

                so you might expect a remission
                for weeks or years or not, which
                certainly sharpens a life, and with no
                dependents to consider anymore

                preparing ready for the time
                more-clear-now to come, the better
                to put your life into its order,
                is it God calling you now?

                I know you have your congregation
                around you (even if it is too much at times)
                how families ebb and go in peoples’ lives
                only sometimes built around the tree

                we four were close for a while forming the
                parts of each others’ lives; it took a long time to
                emerge, even after university, even after
                Nan died, even as my own family grew,

                I was still with us in Genesta Road; and yet
                there you are, all through the chemo, I see
                you adjust your life talking of ‘excess
                baggage’ – I was happy to take possession

                of the photographs: of you working at the
                office seeing those goods in and out, those
                huge ships like family, with their chapter
                and verse, those endless invoices in triplicate

                smell of typewriter ribbon, the bad air-conditioning
                the silly young office workers testing up their futures
                your giggly exchanges with them, all part of that endless work
                up and down the River through endless years like a grate

                take care, much love,

 

 

 

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part of the ongoing life and page of … Mum
death & family & love & Mum & Nan & reading wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
Genesta Road wormhole: still there?
identity wormhole: ‘n’
letting go wormhole: I will eventually drift tectonic
life & time wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
Thames wormhole: still there // above the / Dallin Road / allotments / looking high over the river and the city
university wormhole: … thank you
words wormhole: words
work wormhole: the chiropodist

 

titanic

Tags

1912, 2014, 20th century, architecture, border, children, clothes, eyes, faces, iron, life, looking, passing, people, perspective, photograph, quay, ship, society, Southampton, streets, talking, time, Titanic, vision, walking, windows

 

 

 

     toddlers stand
by iron railings squinting at the streets

     faces peer
from head-to-toe costume of all station for to talk sincere to each other

     faces caught
in crowds all around in the streets or behind railing at the quay
     eyes look
all uncomprehended at the small-box-world that defines their photograph

     written boards
and pipework discern heights of window in the stepped architecture

     lines and staves
the borders between vision and boundary

     a tool
for each and every level of function at each and every station
     of life

deck and perspective wider than a lifetime down which only
     one strolls

and each chain link that holds the ship titanic as a child’s torso

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

20^th century wormhole: tag cloud poem I – numbers
children wormhole: Eglinton Hill
eyes wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
faces wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
life & looking & society & time wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
passing wormhole: they find their life growing together –
people & walking wormhole: the chiropodist
streets wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
talking wormhole: plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)
walking wormhole: 1963