Turner's Dominion

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting. This poem is a homage to William Turner, the painter of emotion, and considered by some to be the first ‘abstract’ artist. My poem describes the discovery of Turner's paintings at the Tate Gallery in London, by a person after an argument, and in which the collision of weather, emotion and grief combines to a distressed state. The man realizes himself, reflected in the paintings… and his turbulent state abates with a calm cup of tea later.

Turner’s Dominion.

Perhaps

I was only seeking…

Some solace,

Or clarity,

Refuge on a Monday

From December

On dim shadow’d streets:

London soaked by storms…

And an argument

Between the sheets.

Slammed the door,

Enveloped in brewing doom;

A blind unreason in my mind…

And walking.

Within the Tate, rain trickling down outside,

Inside, etched on cold windowpanes and

Cold cheeks in pain and dreams

Treasuring a turbulent hurricane

In my heart… searching for eloquence,

The strain of abysmal groans…

In anger.

In the shower’d tap and click

Of footsteps…

Amongst blank staring strangers

I discovered nothing… definite:

But thro’ the wing, to William Mallord Turner

Gallow’d by his rival; John Constable,

“Those terrible airy visions” and

“Screams of painful steam…”

The scurvy rain agreed…

In miserable dribbles.

Yet I wander’d from the melancholic

To jubilation,

And uncover’d boughs of painted wind

From a mind, a vision doused with translucent fruits

Sleet-shooting, shifting veins in mystery

The brush of a delicate isle…

An emerald sparkling star,

Shrouds blending into an aqua tinted Atlantis

Or Hesperus, heavy laden with perfumed oils…

All submerged in deep marines, then slashed

With brooding crimson in abstract, angry fury.

But yet, not this one thing, nor another…

an evasive meaning… in discordance,

Something captured in flight,

On distant shores of smoke,

Thro’ perpetual dawns, and

Across limpid mountain ranges,

Slave ships, burning coal, engines puffing…

Myths rising up, grave typhoons of snow,

Encircling vales of wild waste, and

An all-consuming fire and frost.

This romance of energy

From his dyslexic perspective

Lost in passions, but all too true.

A captain lashed him to a mast;

High up, in the bird’s nest

And sailed thro’ the worst…

In an old-moaning oak, the hull

Bruised by thrashing salt waters

Stinging his eyes, and

Gulls crying.

And I, draped over a fine glaze;

Porcelain…

With a view of the lazy Thames

In sombre fog

Until

The sun cut thro’

A sketch of cumulus…

To reveal

Aurora,

As I

Sipped

The

Earl

Grey.

The Copyright to Contradictions, Gross Factual Errors and Plain Plagiarism Reserved: David John Drew, 2013.