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.
