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Nancy Campbell

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The Batik Block

Nancy Campbell reading The Batik Block 1694.5 KB
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A skilled printer learns to read the image in reverse,
using a little hindsight, less imagination. 

You bring a market find to my studio:
this exotic batik block, ancient, not neatly sanded
like Victorian boxwood for an even impression.

I can’t work out which way up to hold it.
The wood frets round a rough design
of jagged lines mazing in relief
through shallow scorpings of mahogany;
large as the palm, heavy as the heart,
made to be held crudely and without apology.

Are those flowers, crushed at the corners,
seemingly growing from fronds which furl
into feathers around an eye?
                                           Now I see!
you say, It’s a peacock. 
                                           I disagree.
Does the bird preen itself to perfection, beak arched back,
tail trailing, plumes and cockades slanted
to trick a sheen of sunlight into resting there?
No, surely it’s a phoenix, plumping its barbed plumage
into a conflagration of wind and sun,
scratching in the scattered dustbath of its own ashes
to shed its last incarnation.

Roll out some ink on the glass, my friend,
roll it thin as capillaries over bone,
press the block down wet on white linen once
and then again, for repeat motifs cannot be contained.
Each time the image is ruptured
by the hand’s inconsistency
forming extinct species, undiscovered breeds,
flying forwards, staring backwards, over and over again.

 

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