On Seeing`The Edge of the Abruzzi’ To Winifred Knights

Dreamed last night I was on this lake
About to drown in the simplicity,
The exactness of it,

The eerie calm,
The water did not move
Neither mountain. Nor hill.

It was the edge of
The Abruzzi yet could be
Anywhere. The stillness of it,

Just three; three hats, one boat,
Three heads, bodies seated, lying
Against the weight of afternoon

In a silent meridian of heat.
No word, nor gesture, just being,
Immobile, posed majolica dolls

This landscape world surrounds.
Are there serpents in Lago Piediluco,
In the feminine sepia hills, surreal as

Desire: hidden, near unapproachable?
Is that the secret of Melusine, floating
Deep in the country of the heart?

And there every moment when
Like Piero della Francesca
You take a horsehair brush,

Colour, define, shadow. You do it well.
You must be in love with dailiness and magic,
Mining these quattrocento fields for gold,
For the sweet quietude of all living things.

_ _ _

I walked through the gallery in astonishment ,stopping several times in front of Winifred Knight’s mesmerising painting ‘On The Edge of the Abruzzi’ . The poetry of the ‘panorama and the tranquillity’ of the lake, and the knowledge gleaned from Chapter Nine of Sacha Llewellyn’s essay that the painter Camille Corot had been inspired too on a visit in 1826, coupled with Knight’s interest in the legend of Melusine, meant that I had to write this poem as an attempt to turn experience into words.

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