Impressionist

 Impressionist

 

Image: “Day for Night”, two views of Boulevard Montmartre, by Camille Pissarro (1897) in ‘Impressionism’, published by Scala in 2011

 

good morning

Degas Edgar wrong side of bed ah!

make way for the 1000 cameras

the piped Debussy Claude

a tote bag of collected finesse

courtesy the gallery specialty shop

and Manet Édouard bonjour

expect the unexpected

at breakfast high on grass

amidst the madding crowd

in something called real time

 

good afternoon

Renoir Pierre-Auguste thus

perfecter of views

glittering canals

impossible gondolas

soundpods tracking your every glance

where weekenders pay to escape

and Seurat Georges a forge

of individual pixels

a surge of urgent atoms

merging into one big gorgeous

stay perfectly still!

 

good evening

Pissarro Camille at will

witness to how landscape

leans forward into fading light

tends its wild forms

even as they simplify to abstract

and Monet Claude ever

in hat and bemusement

getting down down to the point

to everything the sun can do

affective at any angle

and underwater

 

good night

Cézanne Paul what’s it all for

bringing down the curtain

on all those tricks of the light

the gilt of the salon heavy

heavier than a nightmare

in need of another day release

and Gauguin Paul

tripping to where the day begins

golden again and surfing off the reef

or is that Bonnard Paul

silently setting out the utensils

that washed and cleaned

will in a few hours

return to the landscape of a lifetime

impression by impression

the sea colouring with first light