Poetry Laurels: Lilie and Konwalie in Paris - Monet, Chopin and the Rain

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Lilie and Konwalie in Paris - Monet, Chopin and the Rain

What do I love in Paris? So much, it is hard to make a list... I started from Musee de l'Orangerie and a visit to my favorite Water Lilies, Monet's gift to the French nation and to the world. Eight monumental multi-panel paintings, two rooms, Dusk and Dawn, or Dawn and Dusk... You can sit there for ever. Last time, in 2011, I wrote a set of poems inspired by the paintings, and took home pictures. This year, cameras were strictly forbidden, and the guards chased after the tourists who pretend they were not holding their smartphones up at all...

What piece of music should we listen to while admiring the lilies? Maybe a String Quartet by Gabriel Faure? Maybe the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp by Claude Debussy? or maybe the Nocturne op. 27 No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin?

Among the Lilies

~ Inspired by Claude Monet’s Water Lilies at L’Orangerie, October 2011, Paris

PART I. DAWN

Etched under my eyelids

The water lilies rest on the surface

Of Monet’s pond at Giverny

Intense blues and greens of his palette

Fill me with color he invented

This, I want to see – his nenufary

This I want to be – a lily among his blossoms

With my golden hair

In a halo of sunrays, above aquamarine

And celadon

My crystal necklace

Sparkles like the pond he made

Sunlit, translucent

Mirrors of stained-glass windows

Lined with birdsong

II.

Clouds measure the stillness of water

Cerulean breeze dances in the grass

He starts a new canvas

Turquoise into aqua into mauve

The secret of water lilies

Born in iridescence

His garden drinks in

The dark vertigo of the sky, swirling

With opaque strands of mist

Dawn air chills his fingers

III.

He keeps the colors royal

Vermilion and scarlet

The breeze shifts, scattering the patterns

Cleansing the air

Distant traces of mustard gas

The breath and the brushstroke are one

He is the wind, moving through the garden

Made to be painted

Fading

IV.

Lily pads float up into indigo

Gathering like birds before winter

Pulled by the gravity of belonging

They fall into the night

Blossoms and cicadas

Nightingale’s song swirls above their sleep

A cricket counts the brushstrokes

Stiff fingers ache

It is good he had the ponds dug out

Life is good

PART II - DUSK

The dusk is falling

Brush drops from his fingers

In a stretch of darkness

Contours barely felt, imagined

Shade-green leaves

The water – unfathomable

Murky, mysterious

The end of the beginning

Crimson lily brightens

The moonlight

VI.

The moon is too close

Willow’s shadows

Grow on the other shore

His brush sings of solitude

The willows weep and weep

Drop leaves into the pond

Remember the fallen

VII.

He strains to see

The dream of a blue horizon

White shape-shifting clouds

Shimmy across the water

A day transposed

Above the deterioration

Of time stretched by blindness

He paints a latch to escape

VIII.

Light becomes heavy

Settles into the sunset

Brightness of yellow hearts

Erased in the still, stilling world

Silence tastes of Beaujolais

White blossoms open and close

From dusk to dawn

From dawn to dusk

Only the water the lilies and the sky

I got one ticket at Musee d'Orsay - to tour its abundant collections and to see my beloved Monet lilies. Each time you visit the same museum, filled with masterpieces, you find something different to fall in love with. This time, I discovered Vincent Van Gogh's La Méridienne oú La sieste, d'apres Millet, a large azzure and gold painting of a couple resting at noon from the hard work of harvesting grain. It is quite large, for a Van Gogh, and is set in an enormous, ornate gold frame. The colors are intense, vivid, like only Van Gogh would be: you feel the sunlight burning at noon; prickling straw, the allure of a cool shade... I have yet to see a reproduction that gives justice to the perfect balance of the artist's colors. Pure genius. The blue is rich, intense, the gold of the straw vivid, but neither orangey nor lemony, as on some copies. Of course, none of the posters could have the richly textured surface of the painting, covered with fervid strokes, touchingly unfinished in corners. (I love those unfinished corners and borders the most, in all Van Gogh! They reveal the intensity of his passion...)

Vincent Van Gogh, La Méridienne oú La sieste, d'apres Millet (1890)

And of course, there is the love story right there, in the golden noon. Resting in trust. In comfort.

Azure

~ after Noon by Van Gogh and Millet

Half of the day's work is done.

She curls into a ball by his side

He stretches up, proudly thinking

of the bread they will bake,

the children they will feed.

Noon rays dance on the straw

they cut with their sickles

to finish the harvest when the sky

is still the bluest of summer azure.

She took the first fistful of stems

solemnly, among the rolling waves

of wheat ocean. She made a figurine,

placed it high up on the wooden fence

overlooking their fields. She learned

it from her mother, her mother before her,

generations reaching back to that first

handful of grain, droplets of wine

and water spilled at its feet.

The offering for the goddess of harvest.

They move together in consort

in the white gold of silence.

They rest together, two pieces

in a puzzle of bread to come.

The painting reminded me of my childhood memories, thirst for cool water on a hot burning day, holding a small child's rake in sweaty hands, trying to avoid getting scratched by the thick, sharp ends of straw... I captured some of the wonder of harvest in one of my Chopin poems, "Harvesting Chopin..." - dedicated to my father Aleksy, uncle Galakcyon, and grandmother Nina Trochimczyk. Here a Mazurka will not be out of place.. .Mazurkain F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3 . Like all Chopin's mazurkas it is there and yet it is not, nostalgia takes you from here to the golden past, the joy of dancing in circles, round and round...

Harvesting Chopin

The straw was too prickly,

the sunlight too bright,

my small hands too sweaty

to hold the wooden rake

my uncle carved for me.

I cried on the field of stubble;

stems fell under his scythe.

I was four and had to work -

Grandma said - no work no food.

How cruel! I longed for

the noon’s short shadows

when I'd quench my thirst

with cold water, taste

the freshly-baked rye bread

sweetened by the strands

of music wafting from

the kitchen window.

Distant scent of mazurkas

floated above the harvesters

dressed in white, long-sleeved shirts

to honor the bread in the making.

The dance of homecoming

and sorrow – that is what

Chopin was in the golden air

above the fields of Bielewicze

where children had to earn their right

to rest in the daily dose of the piano –

too pretty, too prickly, too bright.

It was raining outside, when I left the museum with my butterfly umbrella and walked through the drizzle in my ballerina flats. Acacia and horse chesnut were in bloom. White daisies dotted the grass. Flower stands were filled with bouquets of lilies of the valley, the scent of konwalie filled the air. No wonder people sing: "I love Paris in the spring time, I love Paris in the fall..." and fall in love in Paris, with Paris. On my first evening there, I saw a marriage proposal under the Eiffel Tower: in front of hundreds of tourists, the man knelt down and asked his one question, the woman started to cry. He stood up to put the ring on her finger and the onlookers sang and cheered.

Only in Paris...

A heart of a sycamore tree,