POEM FOR PAUL RUSSOTTO
A
series of pictures one upon another
Charles Baudelaire
Chill early
morning Paris spring 2013 looking out from a window onto the small courtyard
Hôtel du
Dragon three doors up from Cahiers d'Art
Christian
Xervos pace editor of books both
popular and beautiful
chambre -
petit déjeuner - chambre - petit déjeuner
The clouds
are moving eastward from the Atlantic
to the
indifference of a clear fleur de lis blue sky
halfway to
Switzerland where they stop to rest
jumbo
cottonballs among the Alps
then to
follow after Hannibal and Bonaparte down onto the plains of Lombardy where
foreign clouds wed native fog
Across from
the window
latticework
crosshatching ivy green and crinolated to let the gaze go
beyond
adjacent wrought-iron balcony balustrades arabesque kittycorner to the coiled
hose
and
maritime life-buoy emblem of Paris of painters and of poets fluctuat nec mergitur back to the ivy
overlaying
latticework in simultaneous visual cognition
an
inevitable geranium on a window ledge
"So
here we have these various planes..." I can hear Russotto explaining to
the un-
initiated
the arcana of painting
while his
hands demonstrate cubistic signals at face-level
SCRIPTIONS
JARGONS
GRIBOUILLIS
KRITZELTRIEB
An elevator
shaft meets up with a ventilator duct
What poets
learn from painters is an open question
Gautier
Baudelaire Laforgue Verlaine Apollinaire
"Cavalry
Crossing a Ford" a small canvas painted by Walt Whitman
Malarmé
chez Manet and the blue-grey skein of smoke still meanders from his cigarillo
(on the
Metro the "alarme" is
missing an M)
Ezra Pound
at El Prado in Madrid memorizing eyes
Ardengo
Soffici Futurista alias Stefan Cloud
Robert
Creeley nightwatch with Franz Kline at Black Mountain College
The clouds
are moving east
over the
broken geometry of the metropolis
the clouds
from Spleen of Paris
Then look
down:
on the
skylight's irregular reflection
the clouds
are moving in the opposite direction
Over the
rectangular patch of glass reminiscent of a painting by Russotto
(vide Study for Restless 1999 gouache on
paper)
the clouds
are moving
below the smudged
charcoal the ivy and the latticework
the grid of
windows and the elevator shaft
The
vertical oval porthole of the third floor latrine
the
arabesques of balcony and the coiled garden hose
the
halfhearted pendulum of the cuckoo clock
and the
corridor of mirrors and lithographs
cubistic
handsignals at face-level
What poets
learn from painters
Lawnchairs
facing hilltop Todi
Matisse's
garden above Nizza
Fanelli's
bar a cave of mirrors
What
painters know and what poets if they're lucky come to learn
ut pictura poesis
Jacques the
painter at Lascaux chatting
with
magicians and musicians
"language..."
Willem De Kooning saying "in order to sit around all day talking about
art"
and there
are worse ways for mankind to spend their hours and their years
"La
rue Saint Jacques..." Pierre Soulages is saying "...was dug up
full of
ivory tusks the mastodons who lived on Mont Saint Geneviève
the rue
Saint Jacques first trampled down by thirsty mastodons
then by
painters and their poet friends
coming down
to drink in the evening
at the
sacred helicoptered waters of the river Seine
ALAN JONES Paris April 2013