Rain beat a swathe of tall grass,
stooked them on more stalwart stems.
Art trouve:
I see a vast Academy canvas, virgins swooning
upon upstanding matrons, sternly staring
over their charges at some off-canvas threat -
the gallery audience themselves, perhaps?
A canvas of flesh and fabric. Green flesh?
Well: 'All flesh is grass.'
And we who had to inure ourselves to the shock
of stark winter gestures must now tune in
the green-clad summer civilizations,
always on the borders of our courts,
their castle walls of papery crenelations,
their green girdles testing us for steadfastness*,
lost in labyrinthine windings,
time-loosed apparitions
patterning eternity.
.......................
*From 'Gawain and the Green Knight' a fourteenth century famous poem, if you need it. He sees the castle walls at a distance as papery before they get solid. There is a test which involves the giving up of gifts that Gawain got in the Lord's castle recovering from his ordeal in the wilderness, in return for the trophies of the Lord's hunt. On the third day, Gawain hides the gift of a protective green girdle from the Lord's wife (she says it will defend him from the Green Knight's axe). However the Green knight is the Castle Lord, as it turns out, and he nicks Gawain's neck - just draws blood - for Gawain's misdemeanor.... reducing him to a disgruntled and imperfect man, returning to Arthur's court.
