Pink Hay
(inspired by Ford Madox Brown's 'The Hayfield', 1855-6)
Anyone will tell you the same -
that it happened in France in the summer
of 1874, light detaching itself from form
and turning into colour, impression.
The great thumbs-down to chiaroscuro
and sfumato, to the Old Masters
practising their scales and arpeggios
of darkness to light, light to darkness.
But nobody remembered to tell Ford Madox Brown
that he was twenty years too soon
and had no business en plein air
with paint-box, eyeing rising moons.
Ignorant of this, he walks it every day
to the hayfield, five miles there
and back, in time for twilight, the moon
drifting cool and sweet as a Mint Imperial,
the cut hay turning pinker by the minute
until a cloud blots up what’s left of colour
and all the magic is gone for the night.
His dealer winces.
‘Hay isn’t pink. I can’t buy that.
Anyone will tell you the same’.
Losing his nerve, he superimposes some figures.
Then a haycart stacked to the sky with hay.
So what if nightfall blows the moonlight
like an egg? It doesn’t sell.
He leans the painting, face against the wall,
disgraced.
Years later, travelling through France,
he notices an oil by the young Claude Monet;
a hayfield at twilight, pink as candy floss.
He buys it, smiling to remember how the moon
came out of hiding above hedges tangled
with honeysuckle, how the fields were scented
with that summer’s sweet-and-sours. How
his dreams had shone like balsam in the air.
Page(s) 58
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