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Laurie Smith

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Refreshment

Monet's Grandes Décorations

I walk among the pools as through
a suite of similar rooms. Here
the trees close in like handpainted
wallpaper. There the Japanese bridge -
weightless, spry, untrod by human foot.
Pools like gorgeous carpets roped from touch -
light - leaves - light - lilies - frozen light -
there is no water!

                               Until the last room.
A panorama - vast inflections of the mind
as if water had thought about itself and rejected
everything not water. Only a thin leaf or two
and lilies like the eyes of nervous frogs,
blinking.

               Two attendants wait for us to leave.
He is sandy-haired, beaky, stares at each of us,
willing us to go. She is Afro-Caribbean, middle-aged;
she shifts from foot to foot very slowly.

I’m the last to leave, nearly out the final door,
return for another ponder.

                                        What’s this?

He has his tie and jacket off, kicks his shoes,
now off his slacks and shirt. And she,
she’s down to her bra and pants, grins over to him.
Now before the largest deepest pool
they drop their final things and, hand in hand,
enter the long-awaited water, laughing, splashing -

light having recovered motion
pours from them in delight.

 

Untitled illustration


Laurie Smith teaches part time at King’s College London and chairs a poetry workshop at the City Lit.

Page(s) 43

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