Catching up with this great thread, and I'm surprised no one's mentioned this one. I don’t know if it's ekphrastic, mock-ekphrastic or ekphrastic only in the word’s first sense, as a vivid description. Whatever, it is a masterful summoning of many senses, right down to the spelling of the names, which makes it as visual an artifact as a Breughel [well, maybe not quite].
Frank
The Card Players by Philip Larkin
Jan van Hogspeuw staggers to the door
And pisses at the dark. Outside the rain
Courses in cart-ruts down the deep mud lane.
Inside, Dirk Dogstoerd pours himself some more,
And holds a cinder to his clay with tongs,
Belching out smoke. Old Prijk snores with the gale,
His skull face firelit; someone behind drinks ale,
And opens mussels, and croaks scraps of songs
Toward the ham-hung rafters about love.
Dirk deals the cards. Wet century-wide trees
Clash in surrounding starlessness above
This lamplit cave, where Jan turns back and farts,
Gobs at the grate, and hits the queen of hearts.
Rain, wind and fire! The secret, bestial peace!
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[This message has been edited by FOsen (edited July 29, 2003).]
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