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Matisse

POETRY

FRUITS OF THE SEA

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.9K views

On the island of Burano, where women,

sitting at their front doors for the light, make lace

and men fish in the lagoon, and houses

are painted the profound colours of sun and sea,

there is a family owned restaurant

Da Romano (opposite the headquarters

of the Communist Party) whose first owner

encouraged those painters rejected

for the first Biennale to hang their work

on his walls – since when artists of all kinds

have come: Miro, for example, Matisse,

Pound, Pirandello, Kubrick, De Niro;

most leaving (in addition, one hopes

to a good tip) at least their signature

in the visitors’ book. I sit where Callas

may have sat or Chaplin and eat, with awe,

a modest plate of fritto misto de mare

– octopus and prawns and scallops and squid

and whitebait dipped in semolina flour,

deep fried in olive oil.

 

 

 

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POETRY

LA PERRUCHE ET LA SIRÈNE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

‘Even if I could have done when I was young what I’m doing now –
and it is what I dreamed of then – I wouldn’t have dared.’  Henri Matisse

 

In his early eighties – a magician
in colours with his (genuinely)
lovely assistant, Lydia – Matisse
creates a canvas, twenty five foot
by eleven, of pinned-on then glued-on
painted paper cut-outs of fronds and fruits,
in many colours, and a profound blue
parakeet and a profound blue mermaid –
seductive, tropical and teeming…
his Oceania revisited,
his northener’s revelation of the south.

There are parakeets – befittingly green –
in the Surrey Hills and mermaids rumoured,
hair flowing fast, far upstream in the Wey.
There are, for certain, by Afon Conwy
sea lavender, thrift and birds foot trefoil
and, in the channels the low tide forms,
curlews and egrets wading and the sea-racked,
black struts of wrecks. Beyond are the purple, mauve,
lilac mountains…my epiphany, my south.

I cut and paste at will and muse with my
‘assistant’ of so many years – lovely,
genuine – on art, youth and aspiration.
Had I known when I became a poet
half a century ago that I could write
this then would I have dared?

 

 

 

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POETRY

FIGURES OF SPEECH

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.6K views

She is scooting on the South Bank, her four years
sailing without mishap through the crowds –
multi-national, multi-ethnic, mixed race
– like a skilled UN negotiator.
We stop – her choice – at the Galloper.
She rides sedately, grinning, on a painted
wooden horse. We stop again – our choice –
to watch an Australian with a travelled
face and lived-in voice reprise Houdini’s
cabinet trick. She is unimpressed
but enjoys the fifty metre sand pit
beyond the BFI. At the Tate,
she watches a brief video – over
and over – of Henri Matisse wielding
his draper’s scissors like a pen or brush.
(Later, she will cut us out of paper –
parents, grandparents, herself – and paint us
as cats). We leave for Chinatown and Dim Sum.

Dusk is settling in Trafalgar Square
as she eyes the forbidden pools. ‘Eng-er-lond,
Eng-er-lond,’ chant some youths from a lion’s plinth.
It is the World Cup’s first match at 10.00.
We cross to South Africa House where
a three piece band – drums, lead and bas guitar –
is playing ‘Money for Nothing’. She dances,
a Chinese tourist laughs and a rough sleeper
wakes from his pitch beneath a plane tree
and salutes us all with an empty bottle.

***

On holiday in Crete, à propos of
nothing, pleased with herself, she uttered
her first simile, ‘Sink like guitar.’
I think of that as we cross the river,
to return to our hotel near Waterloo,
and see the shimmering lights – and think of
Eliot’s ‘I had not thought death had undone
so many’ and Spenser’s ‘Sweet Thames, run softly
till I end my song!’ and feel the warmth of
love and mortality, the themes of
this harmonious day.

 

 

 

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