Paris: Impressions of Life 1880-1925

A poem inspired by an exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery.

Painting: A Wallace Fountain by Andre Gillc.1880, oil on wood

A city washed in the strokes of time.

Each piece a prayer, a devotion to life,

a fountain, a dedication to the moment:

the Seine in all its seasons of watercolour,

its transient flow reflecting great glory of sky;

a park filled with families and children,

pathways of seated conversations; the city streets,

oily light fracturing through rows of boutiques,

each dip of paint carefully speaks; lines from

carts on the road are tooth-picked trails

through dots of glistening rain, still fresh

though worn over by the decades of eyes.

Glimpsed through the curtain lace of time:

something modelled, a perfumery, delicacies

carefully chartered on a letterpress menu.

Pouring faithfulness into life, the 1913 newsreel of

a flower stall when a man so entranced by the camera

is prodded by the seller for payment of purchase.

Moments one eye perceived as others lived,

calm, seeing silence layering existence,

felt lifeblood, a giving to the now of this day.

The girl at the water fountain drinks the simplicity

of the artist’s gaze, freshwater after destruction

of aqueducts, the city once more saying

yes, despite bitterness and cold and disease,

the laying off of suffering, life penned in darkness

brimming edges of brown and red, the moon watching.

Back of men in a row fishing along the Seine,

a boy turns to look at the viewer: ‘look, we

are alive, this day is forever awake to us.’

And the unseen small-boned hand of the artist,

the delicate placement of paint, notes of

music in each offered brushstroke.