Hi grasshopper,
A fine poem where I find both people who're talking - as well as who they're
talking about. Narrative poetry is a rare delight, and I'm finding this a
delight!
It's only the 4th. stanza where I almost feel as if I've lost the narrator's
speaking voice (and I'm hearing something less personal and anecdotal, more
like it's from an obituary... it feels less how someone would speak and more
like how they would write). The rest I feel as if I can hear as much as
read.
Yeh, I wouldn't mind leaning up at a bar with this angel for a session. He
seems really interesting... I'm convinced! And the ending... is, I think,
how conversations operate between people, it's canny too!!!
Bob
>From: grasshopper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: Rembrandt's Angel
>Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 21:03:54 +0100
>
> Rembrandt's Angel
>
>'Large port and lemon' the angel said,
>stashing his wings behind the bench.
>Drink always loosens his tongue
>and stories rose like moths
>to dazzle against my ears.
>'Last night I dined with Rembrandt.'
>he said 'The old boy told me
>that if he went back, he'd be a poet,
>not a painter.
>
>I told him there aren't enough words
>for all the earths he used,
>the brown shades and ambers
>shading into umber.
>Those flat winter afternoons
>melting as evening treacles
>into huddled corners. Light
>your lamps and candles but darkness
>shoulders in with bruised eyes.
>
>His only full-grown child, a son,
>died at twenty-three, consumed
>by the world, and afterwards
>he celebrated, year by year,
>all the small deaths in a face,
>lined loss and laughter, busy
>as village wakes, and always
>under the skin, a festival
>of bones.
>
>Why did he want to be a poet?
>Simple, words cost so little,
>a goose-quill ink and paper
>would supply all he needed.
>Instead he beggared himself
>on the pigments, lapis, carmine,
>cinnabar, gamboge, hues
>from the huge open-arsed world,
>precious and poisonous, he ground
>and mixed them as an alchemist,
>gilded canvasses with colour
>
>but the round gold was slow rolling in.
>The grey wolf was at the door,
>howling with the bastard bailiffs.
>Remember times when he laid
>golden fruit thick on his easel
>but ached for a loaf of bread
>and the holes in his stockings big
>like biscuits and potato-cakes.
>
>So he said yes, next time
>he'd use words not paints,
>because the application
>of it all became too much,
>the struggle with brushes
>as if he were wrestling a wild hog
>to its knees for the bristles,
>or the sables turning on him
>with sharp snug fangs and
>driving him to bed hungry
>and dissatisfied, eyes puffy
>and belly a-grumble like small coal
>in a scuttle.
>
>Buy me another port and I'll tell you
>about Milton wanting to paint.'
>I remarked that his usual tipple
>resembled a sick man's piss.
>He raised the glass to the light
>until it winked, and said
>'Ah, Pasteur, now...'
>
> grasshopper
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