OTIRA ON A GOOD DAY
Is there room in the world
for another poem about Otira Gorge
with Petrus van der Velden
huffing and puffing away at his canvas,
muttering colour is light, light
is love,
and love is God. But
the cheap bitumen
in the paint has darkened
everything
on an already pewter
overcast day. That’s not my Otira.
The harsh light down here
doesn’t permit
those subtleties, nor
the pastel-hued
watercolour
landscapes.
Here all tones are gleaming,
lapidary,
hard-edged, cubist,
chiselled and fractured
into crystals and facets of
schist, nephrite, peridot and garnet
where the fault fracture
goes all the way down to the molten soul
of these islands. Any
minute
the earth may stir and
shake itself awake
or a mountain push its bowel through
its side.
Comments
Post a Comment