For Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
They neither come nor go at Cythera,
Men and young women, moving in a trance,
Their slippers glide in dance;
A noonday blackness beckons under boughs
In shadowed, sunken glades.
The Isle exhales its resin from dark fronds.
But here the painter coughs, knowing too well
Tuberculosis drowns a man on land,
That to a sadder strand
The Ferryman must oar him early home.
I stand beside the easel, hold my breath
And will the brush to dip from knoll to knoll
And make the picture whole
With heads that turn and hopes that are betrayed,
As dusk encroaches and the satins fade.
Men and young women, moving in a trance,
Their slippers glide in dance;
A noonday blackness beckons under boughs
In shadowed, sunken glades.
The Isle exhales its resin from dark fronds.
But here the painter coughs, knowing too well
Tuberculosis drowns a man on land,
That to a sadder strand
The Ferryman must oar him early home.
I stand beside the easel, hold my breath
And will the brush to dip from knoll to knoll
And make the picture whole
With heads that turn and hopes that are betrayed,
As dusk encroaches and the satins fade.
John Mallet is an historian of ceramics.
Page(s) 53
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