Andrew, Roger had already posted "Blue Winter", but it's one of those poems that it's always good to see again! And thanks for "The Name of Gold", which I did not know.
Here's another poem about paintings, hardly unexpected in such a thread:
Quote:
Deborah Warren
Two Madonnas for Private Devotion (Giovanni Bellini)
The pale Madonna degli alberetti
grasps the child before her, but He stands
without her on a marble parapet; He
doesn’t need her insubstantial hands.
And sentinel on either side, a pair
of trees, as delicate as though they drew
their silhouettes out of the yellow air,
shadows her mantle, gentling the blue.
The landscape, halcyon and far away,
is Arcady, a pastoral, a scene
where too much sunlight shows a time of day
– a sky too gold – that never could have been.
Here, also circa 1487,
another child and Virgin. Goodness, though: See
what has happened (stranger still) to heaven!
Madonna dei cherubini rossi!
Six red angels’ heads – and I mean red;
crimson – on ruffs of cumulus, they hover;
tinging the clouds with pink behind her head.
She gazes on His face, though, like a lover
(the dull face of a local shepherd child);
she wears, beneath the blue cloak (de rigueur),
a dress red as the world, scarlet and wild:
Of these two Marys, I might worship her.
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Here's a
link to the Bellini painting.
And here's another poem by Deborah Warren, centred on the same colour:
Quote:
Elizabeth's Dress
Elizabeth's dress was not the red of claret,
not maroon or amethyst or rose.
Vermilion? Not exactly. Was it scarlet?
Ruby? Poppy? Crimson? None of those.
I can have you read the way the velvet
poured itself around her narrow ankles -
tell you how it showed her shoulders: What
I can't describe (except by saying not
and cataloguing everything it wasn't)
would make it flesh and blood and living - but
a thing like color? Dim description doesn't
splash you with the dye that dyed the dress
or turn your head or make you catch your breath -
and if I could make you see its shade of red,
I still could not describe Elizabeth.
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Both poems come from
The Size of Happiness (Waywiser Press).